love me. Her harshness, her tears, her remorse, her Christian
resignation, were so many eloquent signs of a sentiment that could no
more be effaced from her heart than from mine. Walking slowly down that
pretty avenue and making these reflections, I was no longer twenty-five,
I was fifty years old. A man passes in a moment, even more quickly than
a woman, from youth to middle age. Though long ago I drove these evil
thoughts away from me, I was then possessed by them, I must avow it.
Perhaps I owed their presence in my mind to the Tuileries, to the king's
cabinet. Who could resist the polluting spirit of Louis XVIII.?

When I reached the end of the avenue I turned and rushed back in the
twinkling of an eye, seeing that Henriette was still there, and alone! I
went to bid her a last farewell, bathed in repentant tears, the cause
of which she never knew. Tears sincere indeed; given, although I knew it
not, to noble loves forever lost, to virgin emotions--those flowers
of our life which cannot bloom again. Later, a man gives nothing, he
receives; he loves himself in his mistress; but in youth he loves his
mistress in himself. Later, we inoculate with our tastes, perhaps our
vices, the woman who loves us; but in the dawn of life she whom we love
conveys to us her virtues, her conscience. She invites us with a
smile to the noble life; from her we learn the self-devotion which she
practises. Woe to the man who has not had his Henriette. Woe to that
other one who has never known a Lady Dudley. The latter, if he marries,
will not be able to keep his wife; the other will be abandoned by his
mistress. But joy to him who can find the two women in one woman; happy
the man, dear Natalie, whom you love.

After my return to Paris Arabella and I became more intimate than ever.
Soon we insensibly abandoned all the conventional restrictions I had
carefully imposed, the strict observance of which often makes the world
forgive the false position in which Lady Dudley had placed herself.
Society, which delights in looking behind appearances, sanctions much as
soon as it knows the secrets they conceal. Lovers who live in the great
world make a mistake in flinging down these barriers exacted by the law
of salons; they do wrong not to obey scrupulously all conventions which
the manners and customs of a community impose,--less for the sake of
others than for their own. Outward respect to be maintained, comedies to
play, concealments to be managed;