Marthe had passed in a moment from the deep humiliation caused by the degradation of the man whose name she bore, to the exaltation given by a sense of his nobleness.

The change was instantaneous, without transition; it was enough to make her tremble.
She told him later that she went, as it were, through blood from the pavilion to the edge of the forest, and there was lifted to heaven, in a moment, among the angels.

Michu, who had known he was not appreciated, and who mistook his wife's grieved and melancholy manner for lack of affection, and had left her to herself, living chiefly out of doors and reserving all his tenderness for his boy, instantly understood the meaning of her tears.

She had cursed the part which her beauty and her father's will had forced her to take; but now happiness, in the midst of this great storm, played, with a beautiful flame like a vivid lightning about them.

And it was lightning! Each thought of the last ten years of misconception, and they blamed themselves only.