shall I not find in your affections for any loss I
may sustain! The favours of fortune have no influence over me: fame
itself appears to me but a mockery; all my projects of a holy life were
wild absurdities: in fact, any joys but those I may hope for at your
side are fit objects of contempt. There are none that would not vanish
into worthlessness before one single glance of thine!'

"In promising her, however, a full remission of her past frailties, I
enquired how she permitted herself to be led astray by B----. She
informed me that having seen her at her window, he became passionately
in love with her; that he made his advances in the true style of a
mercantile cit;--that is to say, by giving her to understand in his
letter, that his payments would be proportioned to her favours; that
she had admitted his overtures at first with no other intention than
that of getting from him such a sum as might enable us to live without
inconvenience; but that he had so bewildered her with splendid
promises, that she allowed herself to be misled by degrees. She added,
that I ought to have formed some notion of the remorse she experienced,
by her grief on the night of our separation; and assured me that, in
spite of the splendour in which he maintained her, she had never known
a moment's happiness with him, not only, she said, because he was
utterly devoid of that delicacy of sentiment and of those agreeable
manners which I possessed, but because even in the midst of the
amusements which he unceasingly procured her, she could never shake off
the recollection of my love, or her own ingratitude. She then spoke of
Tiberge, and the extreme embarrassment his visit caused her. 'A
dagger's point,' she added, 'could not have struck more terror to my
heart. I turned from him, unable to sustain the interview for a
moment.'

"She continued to inform me how she had been apprised of my residence
at Paris, of the change in my condition, and of her witnessing my
examination at the Sorbonne. She told me how agitated she had been
during my intellectual conflict with the examiner; what difficulty she
felt in restraining her tears as well as her sighs, which were more
than once on the point of spurning all control, and bursting forth;
that she was the last person to leave the hall of examination, for fear
of betraying her distress, and that, following only the instinct of her
own heart, and her ardent desires, she came direct to the seminary,