can see, my friend, how the men with whom I was accused of
folly were to me the dagger with which to stab my enemies. Thinking only
of my vengeance, I did not see or feel the wounds I was inflicting on
myself. Innocent as a child, I was thought a wicked woman, the worst of
women, and I knew nothing of it! The world is very foolish, very blind,
very ignorant; it can penetrate no secrets but those which amuse it and
serve its malice: noble things, great things, it puts its hand before
its eyes to avoid seeing. But, as I look back, it seems to me that I had
an attitude and aspect of indignant innocence, with movements of pride,
which a great painter would have recognized. I must have enlivened many
a ball with my tempests of anger and disdain. Lost poesy! such sublime
poems are only made in the glowing indignation which seizes us at
twenty. Later, we are wrathful no longer, we are too weary, vice no
longer amazes us, we are cowards, we fear. But then--oh! I kept a great
pace! For all that I played the silliest personage in the world; I was
charged with crimes by which I never benefited. But I had such pleasure
in compromising myself. That was my revenge! Ah! I have played many
childish tricks! I went to Italy with a thoughtless youth, whom I
crushed when he spoke to me of love, but later, when I herd that he was
compromised on my account (he had committed a forgery to get money) I
rushed to save him. My mother and husband kept me almost without means;
but, this time, I went to the king. Louis XVIII., that man without a
heart, was touched; he gave me a hundred thousand francs from his privy
purse. The Marquis d'Esgrignon--you must have seen him in society for he
ended by making a rich marriage--was saved from the abyss into which he
had plunged for my sake. That adventure, caused by my own folly, led me
to reflect. I saw that I myself was the first victim of my vengeance.
My mother, who knew I was too proud, too d'Uxelles, to conduct
myself really ill, began to see the harm that she had done me and was
frightened by it. She was then fifty-two years of age; she left Paris
and went to live at Uxelles. There she expiates her wrong-doing by a
life of devotion and expresses the utmost affection for me. After her
departure I was face to face, alone, with Monsieur de Maufrigneuse. Oh!
my friend, you men can never know what an old man of gallantry can be.
What a home is that of a man accustomed to the adulation of women of the
world,