less nights to grant you a little repose.

"But who knows? You are still young. The more you trust in your heart,
the farther astray you will be led by your pride. To-day you stand
before the first ruin you are going to leave on your route. If Brigitte
dies to-morrow you will weep on her tomb; where will you go when you
leave her? You will go away for three months perhaps, and you will
travel in Italy; you will wrap your cloak about you like a splenetic
Englishman, and you will say some beautiful morning, sitting in your inn
with your glasses before you, that it is time to forget in order to live
again.

"You who weep too late, take care lest you weep more than one day. Who
knows? When the present which makes you shudder shall have become the
past, an old story, a confused memory, may it not happen some night of
debauchery that you will overturn your chair and recount, with a smile
on your lips, what you witnessed with tears in your eyes? It is thus
that one drinks away shame. You have begun by being good, you will
become weak, and you will become a monster.

"My poor friend," said I, from the bottom of my heart, "I have a word of
advice for you, and it is this: I believe that you must die. While there
is still some virtue left, profit by it in order that you may not become
altogether bad; while a woman you love lies there dying on that bed, and
while you have a horror of yourself, strike the decisive blow; she still
lives; that is enough; do not attend her funeral obsequies for fear that
on the morrow you will not be consoled; turn the poignard against your
own heart while that heart yet loves the God who made it. Is it your
youth that gives you pause? And would you spare those youthful locks?
Never allow them to whiten if they are not white to-night.

"And then what would you do in the world? If you go away, where will you
go? What can you hope for if you remain? Ah! in looking at that woman
you seem to have a treasure buried in your heart. It is not merely that
you lose her; it is less what has been than what might have been. When
the hands of the clock indicated such and such an hour, you might have
been happy. If you suffer why do you not open your heart? If you love,
why do you not say so? Why do you die of hunger, clasping a priceless
treasure in your hands? You have closed the door, you miser; you debate
with yourself behind locks and bolts. Shake them, for it was your hand
that forged them.

"O fool! who d