Madame de Trecoeur had lived with her husband in an atmosphere of unhealthy storms, where she felt out of place, and, as it were, degraded.

He tormented her with his remorse almost as much as he did with his faults.

He looked upon her, and justly, as an angel, and wept at her feet when he had betrayed her, lamenting that he was unworthy of her; that he was the victim of his temperament, and that he had been born in a faithless age.

He threatened once to kill himself in his wife's boudoir if she did not forgive him; she forgave him, of course.

All this dramatic action disturbed Clotilde in her resigned existence.