elf unknown to him, and keeping him
hidden from the world.

I was greatly disturbed at this news, and a confused longing, a
criminal desire, surged through my mind; I did not formulate it, but
I felt it in my heart, ready to come to the surface, as if some one
hidden behind a portiere should await the signal to come out. If
some accident might only happen! So many of these little beings die
before they are born!

Oh! I did not wish my sweetheart to die! The poor girl, I loved
her very much! But I wished, possibly, that the child might die
before I saw it.

He was born. I set up housekeeping in my little bachelor apartment,
an imitation home, with a horrible child. He looked like all
children; I did not care for him. Fathers, you see, do not show
affection until later. They have not the instinctive and passionate
tenderness of mothers; their affection has to be awakened gradually,
their mind must become attached by bonds formed each day between
beings that live in each other's society.

A year passed. I now avoided my home, which was too small, where
soiled linen, baby-clothes and stockings the size of gloves were
lying round, where a thousand articles of all descriptions lay on
the furniture, on the arm of an easy-chair, everywhere. I went out
chiefly that I might not hear the child cry, for he cried on the
slightest pretext, when he was bathed, when he was touched, when he
was put to bed, when he was taken up in the morning, incessantly.

I had made a few acquaintances, and I met at a reception the woman
who was to be your mother. I fell in love with her and became
desirous to marry her. I courted her; I asked her parents' consent
to our marriage and it was granted.

I found myself in this dilemma: I must either marry this young girl
whom I adored, having a child already, or else tell the truth and
renounce her, and happiness, my future, everything; for her parents,
who were people of rigid principles, would not give her to me if
they knew.

I passed a month of horrible anguish, of mortal torture, a month
haunted by a thousand frightful thoughts; and I felt developing in
me a hatred toward my son, toward that little morsel of living,
screaming flesh, who blocked my path, interrupted my life, condemned
me to an existence without hope, without all those vague
expectations that make the charm of yo