"

The tone in which he said this hurt me more than anything else; in vain
I tried to control myself. "Yes," I thought, "deceived by that woman,
poisoned by horrible suggestions, having no refuge either in work or in
fatigue, having for my only safeguard against despair and ruin a sacred
but frightful grief. O God! it is that grief, that sacred relic of my
sorrow, that has just crumbled in my hands! It is no longer, my love,
it is my despair that is insulted. Mockery! She mocks at me as I weep!"
That appeared incredible to me. All the memories of the past crowded
about my heart when I thought of it. I seemed to see the spectres of
our nights of love; they hung over a bottomless, eternal abyss, black
as chaos, and from the bottom of that abyss arose a shriek of laughter,
sweet but mocking, that said: "Behold your reward!"

Had I been told that the world mocked at me I would have replied: "So
much the worse for it," and I should not have been angry; but at the
same time I was told that my mistress was a shameless wretch. Thus, on
one side, the ridicule was public, vouched for, stated by two witnesses
who, before telling what they knew, must have felt that the world was
against me; and, on the other hand, what reply could I make? How could I
escape? What could I do when the centre of my life, my heart itself, was
ruined, killed, annihilated. What could I say when the woman for whom I
had braved all, ridicule as well as blame, for whom I had borne a load
of misery, whom I loved, and who loved another, of whom I demanded no
love, of whom I desired nothing but permission to weep at her door, no
favor but that of vowing my youth to her memory and of writing her name,
her name alone, on the tomb of my hopes!--Ah! when I thought of it, I
felt the hand of death heavy upon me. That woman mocked me, it was she
who first pointed her finger at me, singling me out to the idle crowd
which surrounded her; it was she, it was those lips erstwhile so many
times pressed to mine, it was that body, that soul of my life, my flesh
and my blood, it was from that source the injury came; yea, the last
pang of all, the most cowardly and the most bitter, the pitiless laugh
that sneers in the face of grief.

The more I thought of it the more enraged I became. Did I say enraged?
I do not know what passion possessed me. What I do know is that an
inordinate desire for vengeance entered into my soul. How could I
revenge myself on a woman? I would have