that it was all her own
fault.

"I know it is," said she, "for if I had been tractable as I ought to have
been, you would have been loving instead of cruel. But repentance effaces
sin, and I am come to beg pardon. May I hope to obtain it?"

"Certainly; I am angry with you no longer, but I cannot forgive myself.
Now go, and trouble me no more."

"I will if you like, but there is something you have not heard, and I beg
you will listen to me a moment."

"As I have nothing to do you can say what you have got to say, I will
listen to you."

In spite of the coldness of my words, I was really profoundly touched,
and the worst of it was that I began to believe in the genuineness of her
motives.

She might have relieved herself of what she had to say in a quarter of an
hour, but by dint of tears, sighs, groans, digressions, and so forth, she
took two hours to tell me that her mother had made her swear to pass the
night as she had done. She ended by saying that she would like to be mine
as she had been M. Morosini's, to live with me, and only to go out under
my escort, while I might allow her a monthly sum which she would hand
over to her mother, who would, in that case, leave her alone.

She dined with me, and it was in the evening that she made this
proposition. I suppose because she thought me ripe for another cheat. I
told her that it might be arranged, but that I should prefer to settle
with her mother, and that she would see me at their house the following
day, and this seemed to surprise her.

It is possible that the Charpillon would have granted me any favour on
that day, and then there would have been no question of deception or
resistance for the future. Why did I not press her? Because sometimes
love stupefies instead of quickens, and because I had been in a way her
judge, and I thought it would be base of me to revenge myself on her by
satisfying my amorous desires, and possibly because I was a fool, as I
have often been in the course of my existence. She must have left me in a
state of irritation, and no doubt she registered a vow to revenge herself
on me for the half-contemptuous way in which I had treated her.

Goudar was astonished when he heard of her visit, and of the way in which
I had spent the day. I begged him to get me a small furnished house, and
in the evening I went to see the infamous woman in her own house.

She was with her mother, and I laid my proposal before them.

"Your daughter will