in this alone is the highest fraternal
comprehension. It may happen that such souls find no outlet either
for good or evil. Then the organ within us endowed with expression and
motion is exercised in a void, expends its passion without an
object, utters sounds without melody, and cries that are lost in
solitude,--terrible defeat of a soul which revolts against the inutility
of nothingness. These are struggles in which our strength oozes away
without restraint, as blood from an inward wound. The sensibilities
flow to waste and the result is a horrible weakening of the soul; an
indescribable melancholy for which the confessional itself has no ears.
Have I not expressed our mutual sufferings?"

She shuddered, and then without removing her eyes from the setting sun,
she said, "How is it that, young as you are, you know these things? Were
you once a woman?"

"Ah!" I replied, "my childhood was like a long illness--"

"I hear Madeleine coughing," she cried, leaving me abruptly.

The countess showed no displeasure at my constant visits, and for two
reasons. In the first place she was pure as a child, and her thoughts
wandered into no forbidden regions; in the next I amused the count and
made a sop for that lion without claws or mane. I found an excuse for
my visits which seemed plausible to every one. Monsieur de Mortsauf
proposed to teach me backgammon, and I accepted; as I did so the
countess was betrayed into a look of compassion, which seemed to say,
"You are flinging yourself into the jaws of the lion." If I did not
understand this at the time, three days had not passed before I knew
what I had undertaken. My patience, which nothing exhausts, the fruit
of my miserable childhood, ripened under this last trial. The count
was delighted when he could jeer at me for not putting in practice the
principles or the rules he had explained; if I reflected before I played
he complained of my slowness; if I played fast he was angry because
I hurried him; if I forgot to mark my points he declared, making his
profit out of the mistake, that I was always too rapid. It was like
the tyranny of a schoolmaster, the despotism of the rod, of which I can
really give you no idea unless I compare myself to Epictetus under the
yoke of a malicious child. When we played for money his winnings gave
him the meanest and most abject delight.

A word from his wife was enough to console me, and it frequently
recalled him to a sense of politeness and g