mine on that fine, transparent skin! Another mouth on
those lips, another love in that heart! Brigitte happy, loving, adored,
and I in a corner of the cemetery, crumbling into dust in a ditch! How
long will it take her to forget me if I cease to exist to-morrow? How
many tears will she shed? None, perhaps! Not a friend who speaks to
her but will say that my death was a good thing, who will not hasten to
console her, who will not urge her to forget me! If she weeps, they will
seek to distract her attention from her loss; if memory haunts her, they
will take her away; if her love for me survives me, they will seek to
cure her as if she had been poisoned; and she herself, who will perhaps
at first say that she desires to follow me, will a month later turn
aside to avoid the weeping-willow planted over my grave!

"How could it be otherwise? Who, as beautiful as she, wastes life in
idle regrets? If she should think of dying of grief, that beautiful
bosom would urge her to live, and her mirror would persuade her; and the
day when her exhausted tears give place to the first smile, who will not
congratulate her on her recovery? When, after eight days of silence, she
consents to hear my name pronounced in her presence, then she will speak
of it herself as if to say: 'Console me;' then little by little she will
no longer refuse to think of the past but will speak of it, and she will
open her window some beautiful spring morning when the birds are singing
in the garden; she will become pensive and say: 'I have loved!' Who will
be there at her side? Who will dare to tell her that she must continue
to love?

"Ah! then I shall be no more! You will listen to him, faithless one! You
will blush as does the budding rose, and the blood of youth will mount
to your face. While saying that your heart is sealed, you will allow
it to escape through that fresh aureole of beauty, each ray of which
allures a kiss. How much they desire to be loved who say they love no
more! And why should that astonish you? You are a woman; that body,
that spotless bosom, you know what they are worth; when you conceal them
under your dress you do not believe, as do the virgins, that all are
alike, and you know the price of your modesty. How can a woman who has
been praised resolve to be praised no more? Does she think she is living
when she remains in the shadow and there is silence round about her
beauty? Her beauty itself is the admiring glance of her lover. No,