When a man becomes indifferent to the heart of a woman who has once loved him, he often seems to her very ugly, even horrible, especially when he resembles Nathan.

Madame de Vandenesse had a sense of personal humiliation in the thought that she had once cared for him.

If she had not already been cured of all extra-conjugal passion, the contrast then presented by the count to this man, grown less and less worthy of public favor, would have sufficed her.
To-day the ambitious Nathan, rich in ink and poor in will, has ended by capitulating entirely, and has settled down into a sinecure, like any other commonplace man.

After lending his pen to all disorganizing efforts, he now lives in peace under the protecting shade of a ministerial organ.

The cross of the Legion of honor, formerly the fruitful text of his satire, adorns his button-hole.