He obtained, what he wanted above all, the contempt of his true antagonists; and he used it as a cloak to hide his real power. For four consecutive months his face wore a torpid expression, like that of a snake as it gulps and digests its prey. But at times he would rush into the garden with Colleville or Flavie, to laugh and lay off his mask, and rest himself; or get fresh strength by giving way before his future mother-in-law to fits of nervous passion which either terrified or deeply touched her.
"Don't you pity me?" he cried to her the evening before the preparatory sale of the house, when Thuillier was to make the purchase at seventy-five thousand francs. "Think of a man like me, forced to creep like a cat, to choke down every pointed word, to swallow my own gall, and submit to your rebuffs!""My friend! my child!" Flavie replied, undecided in mind how to take him.
These words are a thermometer which will show the temperature at which this clever manipulator maintained his intrigue with Flavie. He kept her floating between her heart and her moral sense, between religious sentiments and this mysterious passion.
During this time Felix Phellion was giving, with a devotion and constancy worthy of all praise, regular lessons to young Colleville.
He spent much of his time upon these lessons, feeling that he was thus working for his future family. To acknowledge this service, he was invited, by advice of Theodose to Flavie, to dine at the Collevilles' every Thursday, where la Peyrade always met him. Flavie was usually making either a purse or slippers or a cigar-case for the happy young man, who would say, deprecatingly:--"I am only too well rewarded, madame, by the happiness I feel in being useful to you.""We are not rich, monsieur," replied Colleville, "but, God bless me! we are not ungrateful."
Old Phellion would rub his hands as he listened to his son's account of these evenings, beholding his dear and noble Felix already wedded to Celeste.
