When Thuillier found her there, drying her eyes, he excused her sister, saying:-- "She is an excellent woman, but rather hasty; she loves you in her own way; she behaves just so with me." Celeste, remembering the maternal care of her sister-in-law during her illness, forgave the wound.

Brigitte always treated her brother as the king of the family; she exalted him to Celeste, and made him out an autocrat, a Ladislas, an infallible pope.

Madame Thuillier having lost her father and grandfather, and being well-nigh deserted by her mother, who came to see her on Thursdays only (she herself spending Sundays at Auteuil in summer), had no one left to love except her husband, and she did love him,--in the first place, because he was her husband, and secondly, because he still remained to her "that handsome Thuillier." Besides, he sometimes treated her like a wife, and all these reasons together made her adore him.

He seemed to her all the more perfect because he often took up her defence and scolded his sister, not from any real interest in his wife, but for pure selfishness, and in order to have peace in the household during the very few moments that he stayed there.
In fact, that handsome Thuillier was never at home except at dinner, after which meal he went out, returning very late at night.

He went to balls and other social festivities by himself, precisely as if he were still a bachelor.