fe of a libertine; I bear on
my heart certain marks that will never be effaced. Is it my fault if
calumny, and base suggestion, to-day planted in a heart whose fibres
were still trembling with pain and ready to assimilate all that
resembles sorrow, have driven me to despair? I have just heard the name
of a man I have never met, of whose existence I was ignorant; I have
been given to understand that there has been between you and him a
certain intimacy, which proves nothing. I do not intend to question you;
I have suffered from it, I have confessed to you, and I have done you an
irreparable wrong. But rather than consent to what you propose, I will
throw it all in the fire. Ah! my friend, do not degrade me; do not
attempt to justify yourself, do not punish me for suffering. How could
I, in the bottom of my heart, suspect you of deceiving me? No, you are
beautiful and you are true; a single glance of yours, Brigitte, tells me
more than words could utter and I am content. If you knew what horrors,
what monstrous deceit, the man who stands before you has seen! If you
knew how he has been treated, how they have mocked at all that is good,
how they have taken pains to teach him all that leads to doubt, to
jealousy, to despair!

"Alas! alas! my dear mistress, if you knew whom you love! Do not
reproach me, but rather pity me; I must forget that other beings than
you exist. Who can know through what frightful trials, through what
pitiless suffering I have passed! I did not expect this, I did not
anticipate this moment. Since you have become mine, I realize what I
have done; I have felt, in kissing you, that my lips were not, like
yours, unsullied. In the name of heaven, help me live! God made me a
better man than the one you see before you."

Brigitte held out her hands and caressed me tenderly. She begged me
to tell her all that had led to this sad scene. I spoke of what I had
learned from Larive, but did not dare confess that I had interviewed
Mercanson. She insisted that I listen to her explanation. M. de Dalens
had loved her; but he was a man of frivolous disposition, dissipated
and inconstant; she had given him to understand that, not wishing to
remarry, she could only request that he drop the role of suitor, and
he had yielded to her wishes with good grace; but his visits had become
more rare since that time, until now they had ceased altogether. She
drew from the bundle a certain letter which she showed me, the date
of