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PREFACE

This text is designed for a one-semester course on electronics. Its primary audience is
second-year physics students, but it can include students from other disciplines or levels who
understand elementary notions of circuits and complex numbers. Most physics programs,
especially those in liberal arts colleges, can afford only a one-semester course in electronics.
Electronics is a vital part of a curriculum because it trains students in a basic skill of
experimentation. With this knowledge, students can design circuits to manipulate electronic
signals or drive mechanical devices. An electronics course also gives students a basic
understanding of the inner workings of electronics instruments. Thus, an electronics course
prepares students for advanced laboratories and, ultimately, experimental research.
Because of the nature of the topic, the course must have a huge hands-on component.
Electronics is learned by experience. At Colgate University, we have been teaching a course
that meets two days a week, with a one-hour lecture followed by a two- to three-hour lab.
In the lab, students build circuits that closely follow the topic of the class. We have put special
effort into making those labs instructive but at the same time interesting, empowering, and
fun. We made a special effort to introduce transducers in the labs, highlighting applications.
Today’s students live around black boxes, mostly ignorant of the circuits that lie within
them. Our recent experience tells us that students find the discovery of how those boxes
work, or even the task of building them, extremely interesting, rewarding, and useful. Thus,
we can use this “revelation’’ as a way to motivate students to learn electronics.
Instructors who adopt this text may have labs in place and may not have use for the labs in
this book. However, the experiments listed may give instructors ideas to renew or modify the
labs in place. In addition to the normal curricular plan, we devote two weeks in the middle
of the semester and two weeks at the end of the semester to unscripted projects, in which
students design the device of their choice. This is where students learn tremendously and

vii
viii PREFACE

enjoy the experience. Their ambition to build the device of their choice pushes them to invest
much energy and time, and along the way, they learn invaluable aspects of building devices,
such as creating new designs and troubleshooting. In the first project, students do mostly
digital work (more on this choice below), but they still use a little bit of analog, because
they need switches or pushbuttons for digital inputs and light-emitting diodes (LED) for
digital outputs. In the second project, students do mostly analog work, but they can combine
analog and digital electronics. Whatever the case, students end up doing amazing projects.
Some of the analog projects can be combined with real computers, but this is an aspect that
we do not cover here. If lab PCs have interface cards, the projects will be more powerful. A
word of caution from experience: Make sure that the project does not become a computer
project. Although knowing programming is not that bad of a goal these days, it is not the
objective of this course.
The text is divided into two parts: digital and analog. In each part, we cover the essential
components needed to understand and design circuits with discrete components. We cover
the digital part first. This may seem like heresy to some instructors, but I urge them to re-
consider the concept. Covering digital first makes sense because digital electronics focuses
mostly on logic. The topic is not as intellectually demanding as analog. Besides a few rules
of thumb for wiring, students have little need to know about the currents that flow through
the gates or even the analog circuits that make up those gates. Later in the semester, after
covering the analog part, the class revisits the details of gates. The digital part is demand-
ing on wiring practices, but not on conceptual understanding. This way, students get early
exposure to demanding circuits and are forced to embrace systematic wiring practices. By
the time students reach analog, they no longer have trouble wiring and powering circuits. It
makes sense to cover analog after digital because students end with the understanding of the
complexity and importance of analog. Otherwise, students would get the wrong message:
Since analog is not needed to do digital, it is unnecessary altogether. An instructor who
strongly disagrees with this strategy could swap the two parts without major logistic com-
plications, but he or she would have to continue to emphasize analog concepts throughout
the digital part.
The content of this text borrows ideas on the organization of topics from two classics
in the field: Digital Design, by M. Morris Mano, and The Art of Electronics, by Paul
Horowitz and Winfield Hill. The chapters are designed so that they take an integral number of
days. Labs may also extend one day, and in digital, several labs build upon the circuit
of the previous lab. The topics of the specific chapters go as follows. The first chapter,
“The Basics,’’ reviews the fundamentals of electricity and electrical components. It brings
the student, especially the nonphysics major, up to speed with the physics and basics of
electric circuits. The second chapter, “Introduction to Digital Electronics,’’ covers digital
signals and electronic gates. It is followed by two chapters on combinational logic, namely
“Combinational Logic’’ and “Advanced Combinational Devices.’’ They are followed by a
chapter titled “Sequential Logic,’’ which emphasizes counting circuits, and an important
application in memory. Throughout this part, we include tables of integrated circuits that are
useful for designing circuits. A rack of ICs of various types is vital in an electronics lab. The
lab exercises use a “logic board,’’ which is a homemade or commercial box with switches
that generate input states, and LEDs to display output states. Appendix A gives the details of
this device and its construction. Some versions of these boards are commercially available.
If time permits, the instructor may consider other adventures, such as microcontrollers
and interfacing using Labview, but such endeavors are specialized to particular equipment
for which there is no uniform agreement. Instead of attempting a partial or incomplete
description, we do not cover those at all.
 PREFACE ix

The analog part starts with the chapter “AC Signals.’’ It covers a more sophisticated
analysis of circuits than the first chapter and centers on the use of complex numbers for
defining signals and impedances. We find this advantageous and practical. To complement
this, we include a short introduction to complex numbers. It ends with an important concept
to students: Thevenin equivalent circuits. Throughout, this part reduces circuits to single-
loop modules, building up the concepts of input and output impedance. We follow with the
chapter “Filters and the Frequency Domain,’’ where the role of frequency and frequency
response comes to the surface. The use of multiple filter stages underscores the role of
source and load impedance. At the end of this chapter, we insert a section on Fourier Series.
This is important because electronics’ processing of signals can be understood easily at the
single frequency level. Therefore, knowing the decomposition of a complex signal into its
frequency spectrum is vital in understanding the frequency response of a circuit. This part
can be skipped if the curriculum already contains Fourier series. The chapter that follows,
“Diodes,’’ starts with a physical explanation of semiconductors that gives the student an
intuitive and informed basic understanding of the physics of these materials. It emphasizes
nonlinear responses and the use of the load line, and ends with an application on the design
of power supplies, among other diode tricks. The chapter titled “Transistors,’’ covers both
bipolar-junction and field-effect transistors. Because operational amplifiers are much better
suited for signal conditioning, we do not cover in detail some of the traditional circuits on
biasing the transistor. Increasingly, modern devices use field-effect transistors instead of
bipolar transistors, so we give both nearly equal coverage and focus on power drivers,
followers, and current sources. These are applications that even operational amplifiers
cannot deliver and in which transistors have rightful place. The final part of analog is the
experimenters delight: “Operational Amplifiers.’’ We give ample coverage to numerous
circuits, plus we use them to smuggle in other interesting topics, such as comparators
and feedback. We wrap up with a chapter that interfaces digital and analog signals and
transducers, in “Connecting Digital to Analog and to the World.’’
At the end of most chapters is a section titled “Lab Projects’’ that contains many
interesting circuits that have been proven to work well for instruction. Many of them
have interesting twists that make the experience a fun one. I like to follow this motto:
“Let the kids have fun.’’ If they do, they will learn electronics. Our tests also have a practi-
cal component. When students work in groups there is a danger that they are passive and let
their partner(s) do valuable laboratory know-how. To force them to be active participants,
we test them individually on building simple circuits. The final section of each chapter is
titled “Practicum Test.’’ It gives questions that we have often asked on simple aspects of the
lab that students should know. This includes powering components and diagnosing signals
with the oscilloscope. The goal is for each student be able to do every task and not leave
any activity, and know-how, to his or her partner.
I owe immense gratitude to Joseph Amato. Together we designed this course almost
20 years ago. His prolific expertise and creativity led to the design of a number of lab
experiences described in this text. I also want to thank Wes Walters for selling me the idea
of covering digital before analog; Dave Glenar, Ken Segall, and Steve Slivan for ideas for
labs and problems; Juan Burciaga and Danielle Solomon for useful suggestions and edits;
Timothy Kidd, M.K. Kim, Bryan Suits, Christos Velissaris and other anonymous reviewers
of the drafts of this book for their valuable advice; and Samantha and Daniel Galvez for
helping Dad with aspects of this project.

E.J. “Kiko” Galvez

CONTENTS

Preface vii

1 The Basics 1
1.1 Foreword: Welcome to Electronics! 1
1.2 Charge and Potential 2
1.3 Capacitors 4
1.4 Electrical Current 6
1.5 Resistors 7
1.6 Magnetic Devices 12
1.6.1 Magnetic Fields and Coils 12
1.6.2 Inductors 14
1.7 Power 15
1.8 Circuits 16
1.8.1 Equivalent Resistances 16
1.8.2 Kirchhoff’s Laws 18
1.8.3 Voltage Dividers 19
1.8.4 Multiloop Circuits 21
1.8.5 Transient Circuits 22
1.9 Abstractions and Symbol Jargon 27
1.10 Problems 28
1.11 Lab Projects 34
1.11.1 An Application of the Voltage Divider: A Darkness Sensor 34
1.11.2 Delayed Switch 34
xi
xii CONTENTS

1.11.3 RC Circuit as an Integrator and Differentiator 35

1.11.4 Practicum Test 36

PART I DIGITAL 37

2 Introduction to Digital Electronics 39

2.1 Number Systems 41
2.1.1 Number-System Conversions 42
2.1.2 Arithmetic Operations 43
2.2 Codes 44
2.3 Signed Numbers 45
2.4 Binary Functions 46
2.4.1 Fundamental Gates 46
2.4.2 Universal Gates 48
2.4.3 Specialty Gates 49
2.4.4 Utilitarian Gates 51
2.4.5 Matrix Representation 52
2.5 Logic Families 54
2.6 IC Wirings 56
2.7 Problems 58
2.8 Lab Projects 62
2.8.1 Serial Transmission of ASCII-Coded Characters 62
2.8.2 Practicum Test 64

3 Combinational Logic 65
3.1 Boolean Algebra 66
3.2 Theorems 66
3.3 NAND-Gate Implementation 67
3.4 Representation of Boolean Functions 68
3.4.1 Analytical 68
3.4.2 Tabular 68
3.4.3 Graphical 69
3.5 Simplification of Functions 69
3.5.1 Algebraic 69
3.5.2 Graphical 70
3.6 Karnaugh Maps 71
3.6.1 Minterms 71
3.6.2 Two-Variable Map 72
3.6.3 Three-Variable Map 75
3.6.4 Four-Variable Map 76
3.6.5 Don’t Care Conditions 77
3.7 More Than Four Variables 79
3.7.1 Three-Dimensional Karnaugh Maps 79
3.7.2 Brute–Force Logic 79
3.8 Wrap-Up 79
3.9 Wiring Digest: Open Collector/Drain Outputs 79
3.10 Problems 81
3.11 Lab Projects 86
 CONTENTS xiii

3.11.1 The TTL Half Adder: Design and Construction 86

3.11.2 The Arithmetic Logical Unit 89
3.11.3 Practicum Test 89

4 Advanced Combinational Devices 91

4.1 Pragmatic Designing 91
4.2 Adders 92
4.3 Decoders 94
4.4 Demultiplexers 98
4.5 Encoders 99
4.6 Multiplexers 100
4.7 Problems 103
4.8 Lab Projects 104
4.8.1 Multiplexing 104

5 Sequential Logic 107

5.1 Definitions 108
5.2 Flip-Flops 109
5.3 D Flip-Flop 111
5.4 Edge-Trigger 112
5.5 JK and T Flip-Flops 114
5.6 Applications of Flip-Flops 115
5.6.1 Latch or Register 115
5.6.2 Frequency Divider 116
5.6.3 Switch Debouncers 116
5.6.4 Counters 118
5.7 Shift Registers 123
5.8 Multivibrators 124
5.9 Memory 125
5.9.1 Memory Cell 125
5.9.2 Memory ICs 126
5.9.3 Memory Addressing 127
5.9.4 Memory Access 129
5.10 Epilogue to Digital: Digital I/O 130
5.10.1 Application: Digital Input from Switches 131
5.10.2 Application: Digital Output to Lights 132
5.11 Problems 134
5.12 Lab Projects 141
5.12.1 Sequential Circuits 141
5.12.2 Memory Access 143
5.12.3 Practicum Test 145

PART II ANALOG 147

6 AC Signals 149
6.1 AC Circuits 150
6.1.1 Representation of AC Signals 150
xiv CONTENTS

6.1.2 Capacitor in an AC Circuit 153

6.1.3 Inductor in an AC Circuit 154
6.1.4 Complex Numbers 155
6.1.5 Redefinition of Reactances 157
6.1.6 Generalized Ohm’s Law 158
6.1.7 Dissipated Power 159
6.1.8 Worked Example 160
6.2 Equivalent Circuits 162
6.2.1 Thevenin’s Theorem 162
6.2.2 Norton’s Theorem 162
6.3 Circuit Loading 163
6.3.1 Maximizing Signal Transfer 164
6.3.2 Maximizing Power Transfer 164
6.4 Problems 166
6.5 Lab Projects 170
6.5.1 Circuits and Thevenin 170
6.5.2 AC Signals 171
6.5.3 Diagnosing AC Signals 171
6.5.4 Impedance Matching 172
6.5.5 Practicum Test 173

7 Filters and the Frequency Domain 175

7.1 RC Filters 176
7.2 High-Pass Filters 177
7.3 Low-Pass Filter 179
7.4 Cascading Filters 180
7.5 Important Considerations for Filter Design 183
7.5.1 f vs. ω 183
7.5.2 Determining ωc 183
7.6 Transformer 183
7.7 Resonant Circuits and Band-Pass Filters 184
7.8 Higher-Order Filters 187
7.9 Fourier Series 188
7.10 Problems 192
7.11 Lab Projects 194
7.11.1 Filters 195
7.11.2 Application: Audio Filter 196
7.11.3 Fourier Analysis 196
7.11.4 Practicum Test 198

8 Diodes 199
8.1 Physics of Semiconductors 200
8.1.1 Structure 200
8.1.2 Energetics 201
8.1.3 Compounds 202
8.1.4 Doping 202
8.1.5 The p–n Junction 204
 CONTENTS xv

8.2 Diodes 204

8.3 Designing Diode Circuits 206
8.3.1 Load Line Method 206
8.3.2 “Quick and Dirty’’ Circuit Design for Diodes 208
8.4 Diode Fauna 208
8.4.1 LED and Laser Diode 208
8.4.2 Photoconductor Photodiodes 209
8.4.3 Photovoltaic (Solar) Cells 210
8.4.4 Zener Diode 212
8.4.5 More Diodes 213
8.5 Diode Applications 213
8.5.1 Rectification 213
8.5.2 Clipping 216
8.5.3 Diode Clamping 217
8.5.4 Peak Detector 217
8.5.5 Voltage Multipliers 218
8.5.6 Zener Regulator 219
8.5.7 Touch Sensors 220
8.6 Problems 221
8.7 Lab Projects 226
8.7.1 I–V Curve 226
8.7.2 Diode Clamp 226
8.7.3 Make-and-Take LED Flasher 226
8.7.4 Application: A Regulated Power Supply 227
8.7.5 Zener Diode Circuits 228
8.7.6 Solar Cells 229
8.7.7 Practicum Test 229

9 Transistors 231
9.1 The Bipolar-Junction Transistor 232
9.1.1 Operation of the BJT 234
9.1.2 The Transistor Switch 236
9.1.3 The Emitter Follower 236
9.1.4 Current Source 240
9.1.5 The Voltage Amplifier 241
9.1.6 Biasing the Transistor 242
9.2 Field-Effect Transistors 243
9.2.1 Inside the FET 243
9.2.2 Operation of the FET 244
9.2.3 The MOSFET Switch 247
9.2.4 Current Sources 247
9.2.5 Variable Resistors 248
9.3 Problems 249
9.4 Lab Projects 254
9.4.1 BJT Transistors 254
9.4.2 FET 258
9.4.3 Practicum Test 259
xvi CONTENTS

10 Operational Amplifiers 261

10.1 Negative Feedback 262
10.2 Closed-Loop Circuits 265
10.2.1 Noninverting Amplifier 265
10.2.2 Follower 266
10.2.3 Inverting Amplifier 268
10.2.4 Summing Amplifier 269
10.2.5 Differential Amplifier 270
10.2.6 Current Source 270
10.2.7 Current-to-Voltage Converter 272
10.2.8 Integrator 273
10.2.9 Differentiator 274
10.2.10 Impedance Transformer 275
10.2.11 Complex Feedback and the “Mystery Circuit’’ 276
10.2.12 Active Filters 276
10.2.13 Sample and Hold 278
10.2.14 Voltage Regulators 278
10.2.15 Feedback Digest 279
10.3 Open-Loop Circuits 280
10.3.1 Peak Detector 280
10.3.2 Comparator 280
10.3.3 LM555 Timer 282
10.3.4 Relaxation Oscillators 284
10.4 Real Op-Amps 285
10.4.1 Voltage Gain 285
10.4.2 Slew Rate 286
10.4.3 Common-Mode Gain 287
10.4.4 Input Impedance 288
10.4.5 Output Impedance 288
10.4.6 Output Current 288
10.4.7 Input Bias Current 289
10.4.8 Input Offset Voltage 290
10.4.9 Power Supply Voltage 291
10.5 Problems 291
10.6 Lab Projects 295
10.6.1 The Inverting Amplifier 295
10.6.2 Noninverting Amplifier 296
10.6.3 Mystery Circuit 297
10.6.4 Servo and a Constant-Illumination Controller 297
10.6.5 Real Op-Amps 299
10.6.6 Practicum Test 301

11 Connecting Digital to Analog and to the World 303

11.1 TTL Gates 304
11.1.1 Totem-Pole Output 305
11.1.2 Modified Totem-Pole Output 306
11.1.3 Tristate Output 306
11.2 CMOS Gates 307
 CONTENTS xvii

11.3 Interfacing 308

11.3.1 Analog Driving Digital 308
11.3.2 Digital Driving Analog 309
11.3.3 Analog-to-Digital Conversion 310
11.4 Interfacing the World 314
11.5 Problems 315
11.6 Lab Projects 318
11.6.1 Stepper Motor 318
11.6.2 Connecting to the Analog World 319

Appendix A Logic Board 321

Appendix B If the Circuit Does Not Work 323

B.1 Design 323
B.2 The Obvious 324
B.3 Placement 324
B.4 Pins 324
B.5 Breadboards 324
B.5.1 Past the Obvious 324
B.5.2 Digital Circuits 324
B.5.3 Analog Circuits 325
B.6 Abusive Power 325
B.7 Stuck 325
B.8 Done! 325

Appendix C Curve Tracer 327

C.1 I–V Curves for Diodes 327
C.2 I–V Curves for Transistors 328

Index 331
CHAPTER 1

THE BASICS

Contents
1.1 Foreword: Welcome to Electronics! 1
1.2 Charge and Potential 2
1.3 Capacitors 4
1.4 Electrical Current 6
1.5 Resistors 7
1.6 Magnetic Devices 12
1.7 Power 15
1.8 Circuits 16
1.9 Abstractions and Symbol Jargon 27
1.10 Problems 28
1.11 Lab Projects 34

1.1 FOREWORD: WELCOME TO ELECTRONICS!

This book is primarily geared for physics students, but nonphysics students with some basic
physics and math can understand it. Our focus is not physics. We cover the fundamental
1
2 THE BASICS

physics to provide a foundation, but our primary concern is the electronic devices. The
good news is that you will learn how some of those black boxes with glitzy lights work
and, going beyond that, how to build some of your own boxes. You will discover that the
most complicated machines—computers—are as logical as the gears in a bike. Often in this
book, we do not approach the subjects as precisely as physicists treat other subjects. For
example, using 10 percent accuracies or even factors of 2 for device parameters is usually
fine in electronics. Electronics also involves a lot of details, so do not get overwhelmed.
Experience will help you distinguish the important details from the less important ones, but
still be prepared to take in a lot!
Electronics should be learned from the ground up. Although one can easily go a long
way in electronics by knowing some fundamental concepts and understanding how the
devices work, a solid foundation in electricity and magnetism is important for an in-depth
understanding. The goal of this chapter is to cover the underlying physics, in case the reader
lacks a previous foundation in electricity and magnetism. Because electronics is closer to
engineering than physics, we are interested less in learning the underlying physical laws as
ends in themselves, and more on understanding devices and how they work. Take this course
also as an opportunity to learn that every device is based on important physical principles.
Knowing those principles will give you an increasing edge in mastering electronics.
We start with fundamental concepts and work our way to devices. As we gain some
speed, we will move into elementary circuits.

1.2 CHARGE AND POTENTIAL

Electric charge is a fundamental property of matter that is responsible for most of its structure
as we know it. Taking central stage in our electronic world is nature’s premier fundamental
particle: ηλκτρoν. If you have taken enough physics, you will read electron. It is the
Greek’s name for amber, as the ancient Greeks recognized the curious (electrical) properties
of amber. Not only do we take for granted the existence of electrons, which are in everything
we see and touch (ourselves included), but we “feel’’ their presence directly with the jolt of
static electricity that we get on a dry day. Electrons are simple: They have a mass, and, for
the most part, they behave as point particles. Despite trying to find a dimension to them,
we have been unsuccessful. Electrons do not always behave like particles: Sometimes they
behave as waves. When they do so, people studying them have to figure out not only what
the electrons are doing, but what they really are.
Electrons’most important property is their charge. For some fateful reason that originated
with the cleverness and wit of Benjamin Franklin, the charge of the electron is labeled
as negative. The electron has one unit of elementary charge, which is qe = −e, where
e = 1.6 × 10−19 C, with C being the SI unit of the electrical charge, the Coulomb. This
value is quite precise and is deemed fundamental by physicists. Do not bother trying to
discern the meaning of “fundamental’’—it is a physicist’s way of saying, “It is what it is
and we do not know why.’’ A beautiful story of experimentation involves the measurement
of the electronic charge by Robert Millikan. Electrons also have spin, which is at the root of
many interesting phenomena, such as magnetism. However, for all purposes that concern
us, electrons are simple and have a definite charge.
Atoms have a nucleus that has a charge of the opposite sign: positive. The nucleus is
formed by two particles: protons and neutrons. The only exception is the most abundant
isotope in the universe, hydrogen, which has only one proton as a nucleus. Protons have a
charge, qp = +e, and neutrons have no charge qn = 0. Note that the magnitude of the charge
 CHARGE AND POTENTIAL 3

of the protons is exactly the same as that of the electron; nature as we know it would not
exist if the charges of electrons and protons did not have the exact same magnitude. The
properties of matter rely on the exact electrical neutrality of atoms. Protons and neutrons
are made of quarks, each of which has a fractional charge: The up quark has a charge
qu = +( 23 )e and the down quark has a charge qd = −( 13 )e. This way, a proton is made of
two ups and one down, and the neutron consists of one up and two downs. Yet for all
the fascinating consequences of the existence of quarks, we never see them by themselves
because of a strong attractive force that increases with distance. So for all practical purposes,
protons and neutrons are whole particles.
Atoms are neutral, but the electrons buzzing around the nucleus follow special rules
of behavior dictated by quantum mechanics. We say “buzzing around’’ because we know
they go around the nucleus, but we do not know exactly how. We cannot find out in a
deterministic classical way how they move (such as describing nice ellipses). Instead we
can only know where they are likely to be, probabilistically; for all we know they can
move around in whichever way they please. However, one thing is certain: electrons buzz
around always experiencing an attractive force with the positive nucleus and a repulsive
force with fellow electrons. Within the nucleus protons still repel each other due to electric
forces, but at the short distances within nuclei they are attracted to each other by the stronger
nuclear force.
The nucleus is small—100,000 times smaller than the outlying orbits of the electrons
in atoms. Atoms are symmetrically neutral when left alone, but when they are pushed
against each other the electrons rearrange and atoms are no longer neutrally symmetric:
The sides facing each other are more positive on average, and the sides facing away are
more negative. A strong repulsion ensues, preventing atoms from getting too close to each
other. As a result, matter is mostly made of empty space: Atoms are held away from each
other at distances comparable to the sizes of the outer orbits of the electrons, which are
point particles, with a tiny nucleus located somewhere inside. This is why neutrons can go
a long way through matter without stopping. Electrons’ strong interaction with light, an
electromagnetic disturbance, makes matter mostly opaque to light (with noted exceptions,
such as glass), but electrical forces make matter seem solid when in actuality it is not.
Another property of atoms is that electrons can leave their home atoms to join foreign
atoms and make ions (atoms with a net charge). When we rub a plastic (such as a comb
or pen) with our sweater on a dry day, we end up with a negatively charged plastic and
a positively charged sweater. Electrons from the sweater jump to the plastic when we
rub the two together. By applying clever techniques, we can use this effect to charge
objects deliberately. Other charged objects in the vicinity then experience forces and react
accordingly. Although the concept of force is a useful one to conceptually understand
what is happening, it is not convenient for a quantifying the events. It is more practical
to use energy arguments: If two objects have the same charge, then as they get close to
each other their electrical potential energy increases. If we let them go, they will repel each
other, converting the potential energy into kinetic energy and going to places where the
potential energy is lower (of course, energy must be conserved).
If we have a charged object in a fixed position and place another charge in its vicinity,
then the latter will have a positive potential energy and experience repulsion if it has the
same sign as the charge of the fixed object; if it has a charge of the opposite sign, or negative
potential energy, it will experience attraction. Thus, the potential energy depends on the
charge of the two objects. To separate cause from effect, we define the concept of electric
potential, or voltage. Electric potential is the electrical potential energy per unit charge.
To get the potential energy of an object with a charge q at a point with potential V , we use
4 THE BASICS

this relationship:
U = qV (1.1)

The units of potential are volts (V).

A battery is a device that uses a chemical process to create a separation of charges that
maintains a fixed potential. When it is connected to a circuit, it provides as many charges
as needed to maintain that voltage. Different batteries differ in their capacity to replenish
those charges. Cylindrical household batteries produce a potential of 1.5 V. Their ends are
clearly marked: The end with the bump is positive and the flat end is negative. They differ
in their ability to source charge, which goes in the order AAA, AA, C, and D. Traditional
one-time-use batteries are made of zinc-carbon (cheap) or alkaline (higher quality). Other
types of batteries produce other voltages. For example, flat, round lithium-iodide batteries
(CR 2016) output 3 V. This is only an incomplete list because of the huge variety of
technologies and battery outputs. Batteries play an important role in our lives today with
the widespread use of portable devices such as cell phones, iPods, and laptops. One-
time-use batteries lose their charge as the chemical reactions in them cause irreversible
changes in the battery. Once the charge-producing elements are transformed, they are no
longer useful. Rechargeable batteries, such as nickel-cadmium, nickel-metal hydride, and
lithium-ion batteries are increasingly replacing one-time-use batteries. Conversely, the
lead-acid batteries of cars have existed for a long time. In the recharging process, charges
are forced in the direction opposite to the direction they take when the battery is operating
normally. In doing so, they produce inverse chemical reactions that revert the chemical
elements of the battery to their original amounts. Some voltage supplies rely on the electric
utilities (for example, wall outlets). They use a different technology that we will examine in
detail later when we cover power rectification (Chapter 8—Diodes) and regulation (Chapter
10—Operational Amplifiers).
We need to cover one more concept in the physics of electricity: electric fields. This
mathematical concept assigns a vector to all points in space whenever charges are present
somewhere. The electric field E is the force-per-unit charge that a charged object will
experience at any given point. We can relate it to the potential the following way: Its
magnitude is the rate of change of the potential, and its direction is the direction in which
the potential is decreasing most rapidly (mathematically, the field is the gradient of the
potential). In one dimension, then, E = − dV dx (the minus sign indicates that the electric field
points in the direction where the potential is decreasing). The unit of electric field is V/m.
The force is the charge times the field: F = qE. Thus, if the potential in a region of space
varies from point to point, then that means that if we put a charge in that region, it will
experience a force. The strength and direction of the field are determined by how potential
varies with the spatial coordinates.

1.3 CAPACITORS

The first electrical component that we consider is the capacitor. The simplest capacitor
consists of two parallel metal plates of area A that are separated by a distance d . We charge
the capacitor by moving the charges from one plate to the other. As soon as each plate has
charges of opposite sign (see Figure 1.1), the plates will have a potential difference between
them,
q
V = (1.2)
C
 CAPACITORS 5

Here C is the capacitance, which depends on the geometry and composition of the device.
The units of capacitance are farads (F). This equation is normally derived in introductory
electricity and magnetism textbooks, so we do not repeat that here; suffice it to say that the
derivation involves building the potential energy by calculating the work required to move
the charges from one plate to the other.

Figure 1.1. A parallel-plate capacitor with a plate separation d and a charge q.

For the simple parallel-plate capacitor of our discussion

0 A
C= (1.3)
d

where 0 = 8.85 × 10−12 F/m is the permeability of vacuum. Most capacitors are a variation
of this simple design, so to increase the capacitance, we need to either increase the area of
the electrodes (plates) or decrease the distance between them. To get an idea of capacitance
values, consider two square metal plates 2.54 cm (1 inch) on the side separated by 1 mm.
The capacitance is 5.7 pF. Note that this is a very small value. If we set up the potential
between the plates to be 1.5 V, then the plates will have a charge of 8.6 pC .
The jolts that we get on a dry day involve quick transfers of charge through a spark.
Air breaks down in an electric field of 3 MV/m. The field must be strong enough to rip an
electron from an air molecule. For us to see a spark across our capacitor, we would need a
potential of 3,000 volts, which would mean putting a charge of 17 nC on its plates.
We can increase the capacitance of a capacitor by placing a dielectric of constant κ
between the electrodes. The capacitance with the dielectric is κC0 , where C0 is the capaci-
tance with vacuum between the plates. Typical values of κ are greater than 1 and can go as
high as about 20 (for Teflon, it is 2.1, and for mylar 3.1). The dielectric also helps increase
the potential at which the capacitor breaks down (for Teflon, it is about 60 MV/m, and for
mylar, it is about 170 MV/m).
The values of capacitors in a typical circuit fall in the range between pF and μF.
Prepackaged capacitors in this range differ in the way the two conductors and dielectric are
packaged. In film capacitors, the conductors and dielectric are rolled around each other; in
mica capacitors, flat conductor sheets are separated by mica sheets; and in disk capacitors,
a ceramic disk is placed between two conductor disks. Capacitances above 1 μF need a
significantly smaller value of d to be of a practical size. Electrolytic capacitors and tanta-
lum capacitors have a conductor surrounded by a conducting electrolyte. An oxide layer
coating the electrode serves as the dielectric. The small thickness of the insulating layer,
as low as a few nanometers and as high as a few micrometers, allows these capacitors to
achieve high capacitance values. However, in electrolytic capacitors one conductor has to
be positive relative to the other. Be sure to properly bias these capacitors when you use
them. Otherwise, the dielectric film gets decomposed by electrolysis, and when the thick-
ness reaches zero, you get a short (which can make a big bang, and cause a fire). Figure 1.2
shows the symbol for this type of capacitor.
Capacitors have wide uses in electronics. You will see many applications in this
course, ranging from their frequency-dependent response to AC signals to more specialized
Other documents randomly have
different content
 “Still we can go there and see for ourselves,” he replied. “If she
has already taken a lover and allowed herself to play the trick she
has done on me, you must admit that she is a hussy.”
“No,” I replied, “only an unfortunate child whom you have ill-
treated and driven mad. If she has taken a lover, that will only
prove that she is the victim of one of those despairs which women
have, when everything seems dark. Such an action sometimes
leads to suicide though it has not done so in her case, for she is too
proud.”
We got into a passing cab as we were talking, and in our turn
started off in the direction of the Rue Lincoln. My only idea now
was to find out whether the unkindness of which she had been a
victim had not projected her into some horrible calling. The phrases
she had uttered to me during my first visit to her modest abode in
the Rue de la Barouillére, on the temptations of luxury for her came
back to my mind, and I listened to Jacques the philosopher once
more in a sort of stupor. Libertines of his character never accept,
without the most sincere indignation, the appointment of a
substitute by the mistress they have most coldly betrayed. Still less
do they allow any one to see their humiliated spite. Jacques had
ceased his complaints in order to converse on ideas, and he did so
with his usual lucidity. It is the gift of intelligences trained to
speculate to work in a mechanical way through every shock. Molan,
I believe, will dictate copy, and good copy too, in his death agony!
When our cab reached the Rue Lincoln Jacques peered out with
a more passionate nervousness than suited his dandyism to see if
there was any carriage standing in that short street. He saw the
light of two lamps. Our cab approached and we could see Camille’s
carriage standing before a small house the number of which was
23. The carriage was empty and the driver had got off the box to
light his pipe at one of the lamps.
“The lady told me not to wait,” he replied to the question Jacques
asked him, accompanied as it was by a tip of louis just as the
heroes of the old school of romance used to do. My companion’s
anxiety was very great at this reply, though less than mine. We
stood for a minute looking at one another.
“We will find out,” he said and called to the driver to stop at the
nearest café; “we will consult the Bulletin, and if that is not
successful we will go to the club and look at the Tout Paris. We
shall then know from whom mademoiselle seeks consolation, which
you must admit she has done very rapidly and I expect even before
her misfortunes. It is not very flattering for masculine love, but
every time a man has any remorse at deceiving a woman, he can
assert that he is a dupe and that she had already begun.”
As he said this he jumped from the cab before it had quite
stopped, alighted on the pavement in the Rue François I, and
entered a café the only occupant of which was a waiter asleep on a
seat. Without waking him Molan picked up the Bulletin from the
counter, the cashier being absent at the time, and with a hand
which trembled a little pointed out to me the two following lines:
Rue de Lincoln, 23—Tournade, Louis Ernest, gentleman.
“Was I right?” he said with a grin. He shut up the Bulletin and
put it back on the counter adding: “You must admit that I deserved
better treatment.”
“I will admit nothing till I am sure of it,” I replied, so deeply
distressed by this fresh happening that I trembled all over.
“Sure of it?” Molan cried with insolent bitterness. “Sure of it?
What do you want? Perhaps you would need to see them in the
same bed? Then you would still doubt! But I am not a member of
the sect of the pure-minded, I believe that Mademoiselle Favier is
the mistress of M. Tournade, and I repeat that in that case the
scene which she made this evening is one of the most miserable
actions of which I have ever heard tell. I will be revenged. So
good-bye.”
He left me after these expressions of hate without any attempt
on my part to detain or calm him. I felt crushed by an enormous
weight of sorrow. I have never in my sentimental life known that
jealousy which most books describe, that agonizing, feverish
uneasiness about a perfidy which one suspects without being
certain. I have never loved without confidence. It seems to me that
women ought to be scrupulous of deceiving men who love them in
that fashion. I have discovered that it is not so. Should I commence
to, for again I should comfort myself in the same way love the
simple reason that a person cannot see with his eyes full of tears.
In return, if I have never been jealous in that uneasy and
suspicious fashion, I have experienced that other sorrow which
consists of having in one’s heart something like a perpetually
bleeding open wound, the evidence of having been deceived. I
have known what it is to suffer for entire nights at the idea of a
woman’s body being given up as a prey to another man’s luxury.
This horrible oppression, this interruption of the inmost soul, this
deadly shudder in the face of certainty, is, I believe, the worst form
of sentimental disorder, and this suffering I have just experienced
again with some intensity in reading the name of Tournade in the
address book!
Oh, God! how miserable I was when I got back to my residence
on the Boulevard des Invalides after walking all the way to quiet
my nerves! It was in vain that I told Molan that I was not sure
Camille was the mistress of the cad whose impure face had been so
repulsive to me in her dressing-room at the Vaudeville, for there
was no room in me for doubt on the subject. It was so simple. The
unhappy child had lost her head. Excess of anger and sorrow had
deranged her, and in a moment of delirium she had executed that
scheme of revenge which would degrade her for ever. What am I
saying? She had executed the plan! She was doing so even at the
moment on that night when I saw the stars shining above my head
between the walls of the houses. That hour, these minutes, those
seconds, whose length I felt, and whose flight I measured, she also
lived and employed. How?
The sensations with which this idea blasted me must be, I should
think, those of the man condemned to death and of his friends who
love him during the time which separates his awakening on his last
morning and his execution. He feels a desire to arrest the passage
of time, to even throw the world, and for the earth to open, houses
to fall, and a miracle to be accomplished. With what anxiety he
then feels that life performs its functions in us with the implacable
accuracy of a machine! All our moral and physical agonies, our
revolts and surrenders, have no more influence upon nature than
the flutterings of an insect in the furnace of a locomotive.
“It is over! She is Tournade’s mistress!”
Those frightful words, which I knew to be true, I pronounced
despairingly as I walked along the Rue François I, over the
Invalide’s Bridge, and then along the Avenue de la Tour Maubourg.
Transcribing them now, even after such a long period, gives me
pain; but it is a dull pain, a tender melancholy. With it is mingled a
thoughtful pity, like that which I should feel when standing before
Camille’s tomb, instead of the bitter nausea of anger and disgust
which seized me when I first realized the certainty of the event.
Must I have loved her without knowing it, or at least without
knowing how much, for thinking of her as I did to be such a
penance!
As soon as I reached home, and before going to bed, I wished to
looked at the two portraits I had drawn of her: the first of her
before she knew Jacques, the one I concealed so carefully; the
second of the month previous with an unfinished smile. These two
pictures made her so present to me, and made the defilement
which sullied her at that moment so real, that I recollect in the
solitude of the studio uttering real groans, like those of an animal
with a death rattle in its throat.
My grief relieved itself by such outbursts that my servant was
awakened. I saw with surprise this good fellow enter the room to
ask if I were ill and needed his services. It was a grotesque incident
which had at least one advantage, it put an end to this period of
semi-madness. I should smile at this childishness after so many
months if, alas, I did not find in it one more proof of my personal
fatality, a sign of that destiny which has always refused me the
power to fashion events after my own heart. Idolizing Camille as I
did with such tenderness, ought I not to have told her so before?
Should not I have arranged so that her first movement, if she
desired to raise an impassable barrier between Jacques and herself,
would have been to come to me? Who knows? I should then have
realized with her the romance of which she had dreamed and which
she had failed to realize with Molan! I should have shown such
cleverness, such passionate tact, such caressing adoration in
dressing her wound, that perhaps one day she would have loved
me! Ah, it is the sorrow of “the might have been”!
How true those lines of the painter poet Rossetti were of me, and
how suitable for my tomb—
“Look in my face, my name is: Might have been!
I am also called: No more, Too late, Fare thee well.”
I spent that night almost without sleep, only in the morning
having a feverish doze during which I dreamed a strange dream. I
seemed to be sitting at table during a big dinner. I had facing me
Camille dressed in red with her golden hair upon her bare
shoulders. Near her was my unfortunate friend, Claude Larcher,
whom I know is dead, and whom I knew was dead then at the time
I seemed to see him alive. Although we were at table Claude was
writing. It caused me infinite anguish to see him writing these lines,
holding his pen in a way I knew only too well. It struck me that as
he were ill such an effort would be fatal. I wanted to call out to him
to stop, but I could not do so, as I was threatened with her finger
by Camille, in whose eyes I discerned an absolute order not to say
a word. I understood at the same time that the letter written like
this by Claude was meant for me. It contained advice about
Camille, and I knew it was of such pressing interest that waiting
was a punishment which increased when the guests rose from the
table and I saw Larcher go away with the letter without giving it to
me.
I set out to pursue him through an infinite maze of winding
staircases. To descend them more quickly I jumped into space and
rebounded as if wings had raised me till I found myself in a garden
which I recognized as being that of Nohant, though I had never
been there. I observed with astonishment the beautiful order of the
beds, in which the flowers were planted so as to trace letters, and
in astonishment I read the phrase which Jacques had used to me:
“She had already begun.” At that moment a burst of laughter made
me look round. I saw Camille with her hair still on her fine
shoulders and very pale in her red dress. She took to Tournade a
note which I knew to be the one written by Claude. The fat man
was lying in bed, his face still redder than usual, and he smacked
his lips together with the sensuality of a glutton who has an
appetizing dish set before him. It was then, at the moment when
Camille began to unfasten her dress to get into bed, that the grief
became unbearable. I understood that she was about to give
herself to him for the first time. I wished to run to her and again
the same fearful immobility entirely paralysed me and I awakened
bathed in perspiration.
No sooner had I awakened from this painful sleep than an idea
took possession of me. Perhaps this visit to Tournade on the
previous evening had not been followed by a irreparable lapse? Is it
not an every-day occurrence for a woman to accept an
appointment, keep it, and at the last moment be seized with a
feeling of revolt, defend her person with fury and go away, having
protected herself with an energy as mad as her inconsistent
conduct. Why had I not admitted that hypothesis the previous
evening, and why did I admit it now? I had no other reason than
this dream. It was enough to make me get up hastily at eight
o’clock and hurry to the house in the Rue de la Barouillére. Happily
or unhappily, for a little uncertainty at times means a little hope, at
the moment I knocked at the lodge window to ask if, in spite of the
early hour, Mademoiselle Favier was at home, I saw in the lodge a
servant who had several times accompanied her to my studio. This
woman had opened the door to me on my first visit. She had been
present at Camille’s birth, as I knew, and was her confidant. As
soon as she caught sight of me she ran out of the lodge with a
haste which redoubled my fears.
“Ah! M. La Croix,” she said as she pulled me towards the stairs so
as not to be overheard, “have you come to see mademoiselle?”
“Has she returned?” I cried. Suddenly I realized by a glance at
the servant’s anxious face that her question was a pious fiction.
Camille had not returned. My exclamation revealed to my
questioner the fact that I knew something, and she at once began
to interrogate me. Her questions served to inform me.
“Listen, M. La Croix,” she said anxiously, as she clasped her
rough and misshapen servant’s hands which trembled a little. “If
you know where she is, I ask you in the name of your mother, go
and find her. Since the coachman brought a message from her last
evening that she would not return, madam has been mad with
grief. I never saw her like it before, not even when we found her
husband with a bullet in his forehead. She does nothing but weep
and say to me: “I don’t want ever to see her again. I will turn her
out if she comes back.” She says that; but if Camille returns I am
sure she will forgive her. Do you understand that, M. La Croix? A
child like her, modest and sweet, who never allowed any one to
approach her! We used to say, madam and I, that she would marry
so well, like that singer who became a marquise! No, I cannot
believe that she has gone astray! M. La Croix, you who are so
good, tell me what you know. I am not like some people. I have
brought her up since she was little, and it was on her account that
I did not leave madam when the crash came. But don’t let the
porter see me talking to you for so long. I have already had some
difficulty in explaining why Camille did not come home last night.”
“Alas!” I replied without obeying her request to go upstairs, for I
feared the mother’s grief too much, “I know nothing more than you
do, and the proof of that is that I came to inquire after
Mademoiselle Favier, who appeared to me to be unwell last
evening.”
 “She is not at your rooms, is she?” the woman asked struck by
my embarrassment. Her suspicion revealed to me what passionate
affection she bore the little one, as she called Camille. The mother’s
despair and the servant’s distraction completed the breaking of my
heart. Once more I realized in what an atmosphere of naïve and
simple tenderness the poor Blue Duchess had grown up. She had
been one of those little girls whose coming into the world is treated
as a festival, and the steps towards their womanhood are festivals
too: baptism, birthdays, her first sacrament, and her first long
dress—and all that for the object of so much moving solicitude to
end in the defilement of gallantry! The faithful servant continued
like a naïve echo of my own bitter thoughts: “No, she cannot be
with you or M. Molan, nor with M. Fomberteau; you are all of you
too good fellows to turn a girl like her into a kept woman. She will
be that now, Camille, Camille, Camille!”
Forgetting her own precautions to prevent the gossip of the
porter, the good woman began to sob. I calmed her to the best of
my ability by swearing to her that I would make every effort to see
Camille during the day and to tell her the state into which her
mother had been thrown by her departure.
“Make her come back!” was the only answer I obtained through
her tears coupled with this sublime expression of shameless
devotion: “If she wants to have adventures I will help her as much
as she likes. Tell her so, only let her remain and live with us!”
The struggle then was over. The drama of passion and perfidy at
which I had assisted for the last few weeks had reached its logical
conclusion. My dream had lied to me. It was too late to prevent
that adorable child, born with the most rare and delicate romance
in her heart and head, becoming nothing more than a courtesan.
Her pride itself, that pretty, vibrating pride for which I had loved her
so, would hate her degradation. When she emerged from the
furious crisis which had sent her to the bed of a man like Tournade,
the contempt she would feel for herself would vilify her so in her
own eyes and her inner nausea would have two results equally
frightful to imagine: either she would not bear her life a day longer
and kill herself, or else she would take a sorrowing pride in
incarnating in herself that outrageous type of luxury and
triumphant shamelessness which become a great actress who is
also a great courtesan. Which of these two solutions should a man
prefer who loved her as I did, first of all with a somewhat obscure
sentiment, but now with one which was very full of misery and
suffering? Both perspectives seemed so horrible to me that in spite
of the promise I had given the old servant I made a fixed resolution
never to see the unhappy child again, and a wiser one still of
putting into execution a plan I had long pondered over, ever since,
in fact, I had begun to understand my poor heart: to go away, and
return either to Spain or Italy, to one of those sunny lands where a
soul wounded to death can at least wrap up its wound in solitude,
light and beauty.
I ordered my astonished servant to pack up at once for a long
absence, and I set to work to classify studies and then run through
guide books, compelling myself to become absorbed in the hustle
of this unexpected departure. This new and monstrous fact, the fall
of Camille into Tournade’s arms, had suspended every other
thought in my mind. I had forgotten Madam de Bonnivet, the scene
of the previous evening, and Molan himself. It was therefore like a
sudden displacement of the atmosphere, a recall to an abolished
reality, when I saw the latter about half-past two enter the studio.
It was Molan, however, who was the cause of the moral shipwreck
from which I was suffering. He was the man I ought to curse and
hate. I perceived him, simply recognizing his face, hearing his voice
and touching his hand. He wore his evil expression, that of his
periods of ferocious hardness, and his supreme excitement was
betrayed at least to any one of experience like myself, by a way he
had of biting his lower lip with his teeth, thus imperceptibly
lengthening his already somewhat lengthy profile, and the animal
hidden in every one of us—which in his case was the fox—was so
cruelly in evidence that even the friend most hypnotized by
affection could see at those times his real character. For my own
part I experienced, on discovering in his face the traces of his real
nature, a start of antipathy which inundated me with rancour. All
my sufferings of the last few hours exploded and I received him
with a torrent of abuse.
“You have come to tell me, have you not, you who have behaved
so badly, that poor Camille is utterly lost now? I went to her house
this morning, and I learned that she had spent the night from
home. We know where. That is the work of your egoism. But there
will be a reckoning with you for this infamy; there is justice
somewhere. It is a crime, do you hear, a crime to play with a
sincere heart and to behave as you have done.”
“Let me alone,” he quickly interrupted with a shrug of the
shoulders. “When a young girl takes a lover, she will take two,
three, four, and the rest. If Camille had been an honourable
creature she would have said to me when I courted her: 'Will you
marry me? No? Then good-bye.’ She did not say so. So much the
worse for her! Besides, if I did her a wrong, it seems to me that
now we are quits, mean trick for mean trick, her scene of last
evening was equal to all my infamy!”
“Ah! the scene from Adrienne!” I cried. “Are you thinking of that
to try and quiet your remorse instead of shedding every tear in
your body over the moral assassination you have committed. Let us
talk of that evening! What painful consequences can it have which
you can put in the scale to counterbalance a ruined future and a
poor soul defiled forever? Has Bonnivet turned his wife out? Has he
sent his seconds to you? No, I answer myself, and I will save you
the trouble of comparing the bad five minutes you passed and
deserved with the vertigo which has just seized and destroyed this
poor girl for the whole of her life; I repeat, and you shall hear, for
the whole of her life.”
“What heat!” he replied with an ironical smile. “What eloquence!
We are engaged in telling the beautiful truth. Come, you are angry
with yourself for not having the courage to put yourself forward in
Tournade’s place. That is the truth, no denials, please. I know the
cause of it, poor La Croix. Hard words are useless between us, you
know that, so let us change our subject of conversation, shall we?”
Then after a short silence he continued: “I am not annoyed with
you, and I am going to prove it by asking you to do me a service.
Guess whence I have just come?”
“From the house of that hussy, Madam de Bonnivet, naturally,” I
replied. I was quite determined to end the interview with a quarrel,
and I had used the phrase which I thought most likely to bring that
about quickly. My anger changed into stupor at hearing him reply
to me with a chuckle—
“Yes, with that hussy, Madam de Bonnivet. You hate her very
much, do you not? You think I am very infamous to sacrifice
Camille for her, don’t you? Ah, well!” he went on in a singularly
bitter tone which made me realize that something very new and
unexpected had taken place in that quarter, “I have come to ask
you to aid me in my revenge. That surprises you, does it not?”
“Confess that there is a reason,” I answered him. “I left you at
eleven o’clock last evening, only thinking of her and indignant with
Camille on her account. Then you treated as a dirty trick the foolish
prank of that poor child because she——”
“I repeat the expression,” he very quickly interrupted me.
Another period of silence followed. I could see that a combat
between most contradictory sentiments was taking place in him.
What he had to tell me wounded his vanity sorely. On the other
hand the same vanity desired to wreak upon Madam de Bonnivet
the immediate vengeance of which he had spoken, and I alone was
able to help him effectively. But this man, who was usually master
of himself, had just been so completely overwhelmed by an affront,
which was all the harder for him to bear as he was unprepared for
it. His anger was very great, and he went on in a hissing voice
which vibrated with absolute sincerity: “Yes, a dirty trick. I stand by
the expression, and I am almost happy to have to do so, for it
constitutes a hold over her. Listen,” he went on, putting his hand on
my arm, and pressing it as he spoke. “I called upon Madam de
Bonnivet directly after lunch to-day. I was uneasy. It is in vain that
we know that women are like cats, and always fall on their feet,
keeping something in their disposition with which to twist a
husband who loves them round their fingers when and as often as
they please—do you understand me?—we have to be so very
careful! I was afraid that Bonnivet had made a scene with his wife
after Camille’s escapade last evening. Now you will admire my
foolishness and cease to reproach me with heartlessness. For once
I obeyed my poor heart and it was a success! So I called upon her
and was received in the small drawing-room, which you know, by
the woman, reclining in a long chair, clad in a thin dressing-gown.
You can imagine that clad in lace, with just enough light to give her
a shadowy charm like a phantom, she looked like a picture of the
ideal capable of bewitching a lover who is about to be dismissed.
Listen: 'Have you a headache?’ I asked her. 'I ought to have one at
least,’ she replied, looking at me with eyes I cannot describe—eyes
in which there was hatred and fury; but at the same time they
were cold and venomous eyes. 'You have the audacity,’ she
continued, 'to return here after what took place yesterday.’ I was so
dumbfounded by this reception that I had no answer ready. She
was making me responsible for the insult Camille had levelled at
her!”
“It is a little severe,” I said, laughing in spite of myself at this
prodigious change of front, and the sheepish look of the pseudo
Don Juan before this surprising display of feminine malice.
“Between ourselves you well earned it.”
“But listen,” he went on more violently than ever, “you will chaff
me presently, and you will be right. I thought I had touched this icy
soul in a spot with some feeling in it. I was taken in, that is all. You
cannot imagine what hard, cruel things she said to me in that
quarter of an hour; and though I very well knew to what risk I was
exposing myself by allowing Camille to act there, yet I had naturally
felt flattered at having my two mistresses face to face, and at being
received there myself as a man of the world and Camille as a lady;
and though I had conducted myself as a man of letters while she
behaved like a common actress, yet she dared to make use of
words which indicated that it was a scheme devised between us to
satisfy my vanity and to revenge the insolence she had suffered,
that it was the last time her door would be opened to me, and that
she had spoken to her husband—she dared to tell me that—yes,
that she had spoken to him and explained to him this girl’s ignoble
conduct by a boast on my part! But if you had heard her tone of
voice when she insisted: 'My first vengeance shall be, since it
appears she loves you, to send you back to her, and she shall see
you unhappy, and unhappy through me; for you shall be, you shall
be!’ She laughed her bitter laugh, which you know, and I, the
Jacques Molan you know, listened, so terrified at the baseness of
soul which these phrases proved, that I did not stop her. I might
say if I posed to you that I amused myself by studying it. Alas, no!
at that moment I was paralysed, I do not really understand by
what. But I was. Can you imagine Pierre de Bonnivet entering in
the midst of this scene, and the silence which fell upon the three of
us in that little drawing-room? I swear to you I thought of crying
out to that fool of a husband then: 'You know I have been your
wife’s lover.’ I believe that would have soothed me! What would
have followed? A duel. I should have survived it, and I should have
been revenged through this woman’s dishonour. But the prejudice
which requires a man to bear everything rather than to betray a
woman who has given herself to him, even when she deserves it,
stopped me. And so, here I am.”
“But what motive has she obeyed?” I cried, so astounded by the
story that it did not occur to me to laugh at the contrast between
Jacques’ triumphant attitude of the previous evening and the
piteous confession he had just made in a hesitating though furious
way, being so overwhelmed that he had told me everything
haphazard, this time without calculation and without posing. It was
the shriek of the wounded animal. “Yes,” I repeated, “what is her
motive? She has been your mistress. Consequently she must have
thought something of you!”
 “Her object was to take me from Camille,” he interrupted. “That I
have always known. Now that she has succeeded I no longer
interest her, which is quite natural. The spite of outraged self-
conceit has done the rest. For a few minutes I represented Camille
to her and she detested me with the hatred she bears her. That is
also very natural. She has found a means of satisfying everything
at once: her caution concerning her husband’s suspicions, which
were now very much aroused; her ferocious hate, and without
doubt her natural fund of brutality by that unlikely rupture. But I
am not turned out just like that. I have a revenge to take, and I will
take it. You will aid me, and at once.”
“I?” I replied; “how?”
“By going at once to Camille,” he told me, and as I made a
gesture he insisted: “Yes, to Camille. There is a first night at the
Théâtre Français for which I have a box. I wish to attend the
performance with her tête-à-tête, do you understand? Madam de
Bonnivet will be there. I want the wretch to see me with little
Favier, and I want her to realize that we are reconciled and happy,
for that will wound her self-conceit. It is the only place where I can
attack her. Ah! she is convinced that I left her house in tears with
my heart torn, and that I am miserable! She will have before her
fine guinea fowl eyes the proof that she will no longer be of any
more account in our lives, Camille’s and mine, than that,” and he
threw down a match with which he had just lit his cigarette; “and
she will have to say to herself: 'All the same, this man has had me.’
For I have had her; she cannot alter the fact that she has been my
mistress. What a revenge it is even to think that a woman can
never efface that!”
This horrible explosion of evil sentiments had made the face of
Jacques, who not without reason passed as a handsome man, and
who could make himself so feline, so gentle, and so caressing,
quite sinister. He was hideous at this moment when he was
justifying in a striking way the theories of poor Claude upon the
savage hatred which is at the root of sexual intercourse. This so-
called love, which has cruelty for its root, has always been so
repulsive to me that it was impossible for me to pity Jacques,
although I felt that he was as unhappy as it was possible for him to
be. Besides, I could clearly see the absolute uselessness of the
mission which the discarded lover wished me to undertake. Madam
de Bonnivet’s character became quite clear to me. I realized that
even with his subtle pretensions to trickery my companion had
been in the hands of this woman what the most corrupt of writers
would always be in the hands of a really wicked creature who did
not dally with depravity. A child, a poor, little swaggering imp of
vice immediately unmasked and bound.
This implacable coquette had amused herself by destroying little
Favier’s happiness with the joy those beings who cannot feel
experience in torturing the sentiments of others! She had seen
clearly into Molan’s heart. She had manœuvred so as to bury the
knife in the vulnerable part and at the desired moment. She turned
him out, after that had been done, with the only pleasure she could
feel—that of causing suffering. He, the theorist of all Parisian
depravities, had allowed himself to be cornered at this little
execution without any suspicion. Now he was foaming at the mouth
with impotent rage against the mistress who had played with him
as long as this sport had suited her despotism, her ennui, and her
moral depravity. But she had not left in his hands a line of her
writing, a portrait—nothing in fact which could bear witness to their
liaison. No. Molan was no match for her, and had I not been
influenced by other motives I should have refused to undertake the
commission he desired. The only service to render him was to take
him away from any intercourse with this terrible woman. Besides,
again making use of the unfortunate actress in this affair would
have appeared to me the misery of miseries, and I told him so. “Be
satisfied,” I said, “with this revenge, for when you speak of the
other you forget what your relations with Camille are.”
“How?” he said, and he made use of the most astounding
expression his egoism had ever uttered in my presence: “Since I
forgive her that night with Tournade!”
 “But,” I replied, “perhaps she does not forgive you.”
“Now,” he said, “you have only to go and ask her to give me a
ten minutes’ interview here. You will see if she will refuse. Do it for
me and for her!”
“No, no,” I gave as my final reply with the brutality of real
indignation, which made him shrug his shoulders and pick up his
hat as he said—
“Very well, I will go and find her myself.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Where she is,” he answered.
“At Tournade’s house?”
“Yes. After all an encounter with that funny fellow would rest my
nerves. Then the Bonnivet woman will hear of it, and it will be
another proof that I still love Camille. But I shall find a letter from
her at home waiting, asking me to see her. It is surprising that she
has not reappeared this morning.”
He had again become the Jacques Molan of his best days, the
man of such assurance, of such imperturbable personal affirmation,
from which a curious authority emanated. Henceforward I was
refractory on my own account. Was it the same with Camille?
Would he not succeed in recovering his influence over the poor
mistress he had tormented and vilified? Then what worse
degradation would she have to suffer? That question which I asked
myself when Jacques had at last gone so overwhelmed me with
bitterness that my desire to go away, to see neither him nor her
and to know no more about them, became irresistible. I decided to
start for Marseilles that same evening. There I would decide upon
my destination. I spent the rest of the day in making the necessary
arrangements and visiting a few relatives. From time to time I
looked at my watch, and at the thought that the time of departure
was approaching a hand seemed to clutch my heart. I felt
beforehand the chill of the solitude which I was about to enter in
leaving the city in which my only love lived and breathed. How
great was my discomfiture when at six o’clock, just as I was sitting
down to dinner, I heard a carriage stop. The bell rang and then I
heard a voice, that of the person I most desired and at the same
time most feared to see, the voice of Camille Favier!
“Are you going away?” she asked me when I went to her in the
studio, where I had told the servant to take her. “I saw your trunks
in the anteroom.”
“Yes,” I said, “I am going for a tour in Italy.” She had not raised
her veil, as if she did not wish me to see her face. This sign of the
shame which she felt was very pleasant to me. It was a proof, after
so many others, of her natural delicacy, which made her lapse into
prostitution all the more heart-breaking to me, and which made her
more sadly, though madly, dear to me.
“When?” she again asked me.
“In an hour and twenty-five minutes if the train is not late,” I said
in a joking tone looking at the clock, the sound of whose ticking
filled the empty room. For a time we remained silently listening to
this noise of time, the unalterable step of life which had led us to
that moment which would lead us on to other moments, moments
we foresaw likely to be dishonourable for her and melancholy for
me. Although we had only exchanged those insignificant words, she
saw that I knew everything. She sat down, leant her forehead on
her hands, and went on—
“So much the worse. I wanted you to take a message for me to
Jacques.”
“What?” I said tremblingly; I anticipated the horrible confidence.
But I added: “If I can be of service to you by postponing my
departure——”
“No,” she said with strange energy. “It is not worth the trouble. It
is better that I should never see you again. It was to return him
this letter he sent me to-day—see to what address,” and she held
out the envelope on which I could see the name of Tournade and
the Rue Lincoln; she added in a voice which was less firm: “I
wished to ask him not to write to me nor seek for me again, either
there or elsewhere, as I am no longer free.”
Then followed another period of silence, after which she got up
and offered me her hand, saying—
“I will send him back the letter myself through the post. It will be
better. Now, Vincent, good-bye, and a pleasant trip. You will
remember me, will you not, and not judge me too harshly. Come,
give me a kiss, as we shall not see one another again till God
knows when!”
As I pressed my lips upon her cheek I felt through her veil that it
was moist with tears. Not another word was spoken between us. I
could not find a question to ask her. She did not think of a plaint to
make. Even at the deathbeds of those I loved most I have never
said a good-bye which has cost me more.
 CHAPTER XI

Yes, it was a sad and rending farewell! I must, too, have been
plunged into the depths of melancholy in my heart, for as I wrote
the account of it I sprinkled the paper with my tears; and now I
feel that I have hardly the strength to take up my pen again to add
to this real romance the sinister epilogue, the suggestive irony of
which alone decided me to write these pages. Twenty-five months
and an absence of that length have not healed my secret wound. It
is still open and bleeding at the recollection simply of Camille’s
cheek moist with those vain tears beneath my farewell kiss, the
first and last I ever placed on that charming face which was now
profaned for ever. Yet if absence and silence are the two great
remedies for those passions without hope and desire, one of which
my strange sentiment for this poor girl was, I can do myself the
justice to say that I sincerely practised them. Those twenty-five
months appeared to me so short, so short when compared with
those few weeks spent in following hour by hour the fatal march of
the deceived mistress towards despair, and the rest without trying
to prevent it.
But let us run through those two years from memory, and also to
prove that I have not much to regret in their employment. First of
all, that same evening came my hurried flight to Marseilles, then
the following day I sailed for Tuscany by one of the boats which call
at Bastia eighteen hours later and then at Leghorn. I have always
preferred this way of entering dear Italy without halts by the way,
besides which this journey did away with the possibility of
telegrams or letters for at least half a week, from Sunday to
Thursday. Would Camille Favier leave Tournade and resume her
position as Jacques’ mistress or not? Would the latter follow up his
absurd project of a duel with his new rival? Would he not extend
the folly of his humiliated self-conceit to the length of having an
affair with Pierre de Bonnivet as well? So weary was I that I no
longer wished to set myself these problems. O God, how weary I
was! In parenthesis, I was very wrong in setting myself these
problems, for to talk like my friend Claude, who used to quote with
such delight a phrase from Beyle upon the execution of one of his
heroes: “Everything went off simply and decently.”
I found out that detail afterwards, but much later. At the time I
remained in an uncertainty which I had the wisdom to prolong. But
four months later, opening by chance a French paper in a hotel in
Perugia, I saw that Mademoiselle Camille Favier was to replace
Mademoiselle Berthe Vigneau in the chief part of a comedy by
Dorsenné; that Molan was publishing a collection of his own plays;
that a horse of M. Tournade’s, Butterfly, had won some big race;
that at a very select gathering at M. de Senneterre’s Madam X——,
Madam Y——, Madam Z——, and Madam de Bonnivet were noticed.
All this news was packed into this one issue of the paper like raisins
in a pudding. It sufficed to prove to me that this corner of the
world, like all corners of the world, was still itself, and that there
was a reassuring lack of important events. But on my part, was I
not imitating myself by copying first a part of the fresco of Spinello
Aretino on Saint Ephése, then the Salomé of Fra Filippo Lippo at
Prato, and going on with a study after the Piero della Francesca by
Arezzo? Then I was preparing to go to Ancona; afterwards to
Brindisi; to visit Athens and Olympia, to feast with new visions the
most sterile and insatiable of dilettantisms. When I think of that
furious work of vain culture, I repeat to myself another phrase
which Dorsenné was always quoting, the exclamation of the dying
Bolivar so poignant with lassitude: “Those who have served the
Revolution have ploughed the sea!” Have those who have served
art as I have served it accomplished more useful work? Then what
is it?
 Then what? I think that Bonaparte, Talleyrand, Bernadotte and
many others would have smiled a smile of the most profound
contempt for the dying revolutionary who had caught no treasure
in the great troubled sea of politics, and I have only to think of the
two little scenes which fixed the bitter crisis in my memory to smile
a no less contemptuous smile at myself. However, after my tour in
Greece, I returned to prepare for a longer stay in the Orient, and a
visit to Egypt and Asia Minor in the month of October, to begin
there that series of pictures upon our Lord, conceived in their
natural environment, which would have been the definitive work of
my maturity if another had not anticipated me.
Chance had prevented me meeting Jacques and Camille between
these two trips. I only know that the latter was more celebrated
than ever and the former had married. He had decided at last to
pluck the ripe pear, and he had done so under the wisest
conditions. He had married a widow of about his own age who was
very rich and without children, with sufficient to provide him in his
maturity with a luxurious home without the aid of his copy. But as
he had not deigned to add a friendly word to the wedding card he
sent me I had not written to him. That absolute suppression of
intercourse between us hardly allowed me to expect to see him
enter, as he did the other day, my studio, looking a little older, but
with as clear an eye, as satirical a mouth, and as well-dressed and
smart a person as ever. Had we met on the previous evening he
could not have shaken hands with gayer cordiality, and at once
without waiting to hear my news began—
“You don’t know the pleasure I feel in seeing you again. When
will you come and dine and be presented to Madam Molan? You
shall see that I have been lucky in the marriage lottery. I am sure
you will be very pleased with her. She knows, too, how I like you.
Yes, we have not met lately, but that is no reason for forgetting.
What have you been doing since we had our last chat? It is two
years ago; how time passes! I knew that you had gone to the
Orient. I heard of you through Laurens, the Consul at Cairo. You
see, I followed your movements from afar. But tell me,” he went
on, after I had replied to him in some embarrassment. These subtle
cordialities after such indifference still disconcerted me a little. “Yes,
tell me. Have you seen Camille Favier?”
“Me?” I cried, and I felt that I was blushing under his indulgent,
ironical look, “never. Why do you ask that?”
“Ah, my dear boy,” he said laughing, and this time with a gay
laugh which displayed his white teeth, which had remained quite
sound though he was forty, “you were born simple and simple you
will remain.”
“I understand you less and less,” I replied somewhat impatiently.
“Why? She pleased you. You pleased her. She has had lover after
lover since Tournade—Philippe de Vardes, Machault, Roland de
Bréves—every one, in fact, ending by the little Duke of Lautrec,
who spends 200,000 francs a year on her, and yet you did not
return! It is said,” he continued with more malice still in his eyes,
“that you will never see her again except under my chaperonage!
Do you recall our last conversation, how I asked you to act as my
ambassador to her and you refused? Ah, well, I want you to
undertake another mission to her. Are you going to refuse again?”
“That depends upon the mission,” I replied in the same jesting
tone.
“Alas! it is quite a literary one,” he went on gaily. “It is not that I
fear my wife’s jealousy. We are not lovers, she and I. We are
associates for life, and she is intelligent enough to understand that
the infidelities of a man like myself are of no consequence. But I
have in all things a horror of going back, and particularly in love!
Briefly this is what it is. You remember Madam de Bonnivet and her
jealousy of Camille?”
“Queen Anne!” I interrupted; “do you want to send me to her
too? That would crown everything.”
“No!” he said, “that is all over, and a very good thing, too. Do you
know that she has been left a widow. There is a report that she is
going to get married again. But the whole story, Camille’s jealousy,
the scene at my rooms, and the scene in the drawing-room, were
all so well suited to a play that I have written one. It is a kind of
Adrienne Lecouvreur, but modern. I have read it to a few friends
and they are all of the same opinion, that it is the best thing I have
done. We shall see whether his accession of wealth has spoiled
Jacques Molan. It is a fact that I swore to write no more, and this is
the only exception I shall make to that rule. After the age of forty,
however great a genius a man may be, he repeats himself, then he
has outlived his day. When a man cannot surpass himself it is
better for him to be silent. I dream of an end like Shakespeare and
Rossini, the end of a very little Rossini and an even smaller
Shakespeare. But I have done what I can and I wish to let my
twenty volumes rest. But this opportunity was too strong for me.
The subject took possession of me, and the play is written. I repeat
it is the last!”
“You have written a play upon that story?” I interrupted. “What
will Madam de Bonnivet say?”
“That I am not clever,” he said. “With women of the world it is
very simple. You figure in their drawing-rooms and you are a great
man. You no longer appear there and your plays are not worth
seeing. My wife has already recognized three of our friends as the
principal character in the play. Besides people like the Bonnivets are
very common now and they will not be recognized in it.”
“But Camille, whose romance, a sad and true romance, this
adventure was, have you not thought of what you were doing to
her by transporting her adventure warm with life to the stage?”
“That is precisely it,” he replied nodding his head; “it is her life
and her personality. She is the only one who can play the part, and
I do not know how to negotiate with her. She is a strange creature.
She never forgets. Would you believe that three weeks ago she
spoke bitterly of me to one of our mutual friends! If I write to her
she is quite capable of leaving my letter unopened. Some one must
go and suggest the part to her, some one before whom she has no
self-conceit. I thought of Fomberteau. But we have not been very
friendly since my marriage. He reproached me with selling myself.
What foolishness! Camille and he have quarrelled, too, over some
article. Oh, she has become a great actress now. That is the reason
I have come to you to ask for your assistance.”
“Me!” I cried. “You want me to go with your manuscript and beg
that poor girl not only to forgive you for writing the play, but also
on your behalf to take the part herself! Come, let me look you
straight in the face! But you are not a fool. You are a man like
another. Yet you do not realize what a monstrous thing you are
proposing to me!”
“Ah, well!” he replied with his usual smile, which he had already
employed to laugh at my naïveté, “will you undertake simply to
convey our conversation to her as far as your indignant exit just
now? I authorize you to do so. That does not make you into the
accomplice of any infamy. You are going to see an old friend you
have somewhat neglected. Nothing can be more natural, can it?
You talk of the rain and the fine weather. My name is mentioned
and you repeat our conversation exactly, beginning like this: What
do you think Jacques dared to ask me? You will then see what
answer she will give.”
Was it the continuation of the habitual empire his vitality had
exercised from our college days over my doubts? Was there
concealed within me a secret desire to see Camille again, a
curiosity to know what the Blue Duchess of two years ago had
become? Did I also feel curious to know her reply to Jacques’
outrageous proposal? But whatever the reason, I accepted this
mission which I considered and still consider monstrous. I called
upon Camille, everybody’s Camille, to take her the horrible words of
her old lover. I saw once more the face I loved so well, but now it
was framed in ignoble luxury which contrasted so cruelly to my
mind with the proud and humble simplicity of the Rue de la
Barouillére! Not one of those pieces of furniture in those former
apartments in that old street but told of a noble act of her who did
not wish to sell her beauty, or of her mother who had saved the
honour of their name by the heroic sacrifice of her fortune. There
was not a room in the sumptuous house, that home of infamy
where she lived now in the Avenue de Villiers, like my fashionable
colleagues, which did not tell of one of her prostitutions.
Was it indeed the woman who, when I last saw her, had not
dared to raise her veil, as if she were afraid I should see the traces
on her pale cheeks of Tournade’s caresses? Yes, it was the same
woman who now received me laughing in insolent bravado with not
a trace of embarrassment; and she was still beautiful, adorably
beautiful, with her fine and delicate beauty, which I believe would
never have deserted her whatever her surroundings; but she was
now so provoking, so shameless!
Not a word, not a blush, not a falter betrayed that she felt any
emotion at seeing in me the witness of what must remain to her a
perpetual memory. She lit, while she listened to me, an Egyptian
cigarette of tobacco the colour of her hair, and smoked it, exhaling
the bluish smoke through her delicate nostrils, with wide open eyes
between her eyelashes which had been slightly eaten away by the
crayon she used. Her mouth looked too red from the rouge of the
night before; her cheeks were fuller and her throat was larger; and
her more opulent lips were defined by a dressing-gown which was
a costume of blue stuff worked and embroidered with silver. I
began as a matter of politeness by giving her a brief account of my
travels, my work and my return; then I broached the real object of
my visit, and I conveyed to her brutally, without evasion, Molan’s
proposal.
“Is he cad enough!” she said shrugging her supple shoulders. “Is
he cad enough!” For a moment I hoped that a nausea of disgust
would prove to me that the old Camille was not dead. But no, she
went on after a brief silence: “If there is really a fine part for me,
tell him to send or bring me the play. He is so very clever when he
is clever! Have you read the play? Is he satisfied with it? You know
I am really in need of a fine part. So is he, for since he has become
wealthy, he is allowing himself to be forgotten. Between the two of
us I will answer for its success: his prose is so tender and I
interpret it so well!”
Not a vestige of indignation did she feel, that indignation I had
felt at knowing that the sorrowful romance of her irreparable
downfall was profaned! Hardly a vestige of malice did she show
against Jacques, that malice he himself expected! From her clear
eyes which retained the colour, the transparent purity, of the days
of her innocence, I now saw her smile at the fine part, as I had
seen Jacques smile on the subject of the play. Then it was I really
understood the reason I should never be a great artist. For them—
for him as I have always known him, for her as she has become
after her first experience, their entire life, hearts included, is only
an opportunity for producing the special act they have to produce,
the precious secretion which they make, as the bee does honey, as
the spider does its web, by an instinct blind and ferocious as all
instincts are.
Love, hate, joy and sorrow is the soil to make the flower of their
talent grow, this flower of delicacy and of passion, for which they
do not hesitate a moment to kill in themselves all real delicacy and
living passion. For a word to speak on the stage, for a phrase to
write in a book, this woman and this man would sell their father
and their mother—Camille had not even mentioned hers; they
would sell their friend, their child, and their sweetest memory. I,
who have spent my life in feeling what they express so well, he in
black and white, she by gestures and in moving accents, only
succeed in paralysing myself with that which exalts these
expressive natures; in exhausting myself with that which nourishes
these souls of prey. Does destiny then will it that artists, little or
great, be of necessity distributed between the two classes, those
who transcribe marvellously without feeling the passions which the
other class feels without power to transcribe? Was Jacques right in
saying that his cruelty to Camille by giving her memories would
also give her talent? A fine part! A good play! Really we do not
complain at remaining obscure and mediocre, if this obscurity and
mediocrity are the condition for real feeling. Besides we have no
choice.

THE END.

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY WM. BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PLYMOUTH

Transcriber’s Notes:
Missing or obscured punctuation was corrected.
Phrase corrected: “Une Épopée de ce temps” instead of “Une
Épopée de a temps”
Unbalanced quotation marks were left as the author
intended.
Typographical errors were silently corrected.
Spelling was made consistent when a predominant form was
found in this book; otherwise it was not changed.
Miraut instead of Mirant.
Inconsistent accents in French words were corrected and
regularized.
Barouillére instead of Barcuellère or Bareuillère.
Champmeslé instead of Champmeslè.
Bressoré instead of Bressorè.
Odéon instead of Odeôn or Odeòn.
Théâtre instead of Théatre in names of places.
Éthorel instead of Ethorel.
Élysées instead of Elysées.
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