want to have your revenge
upon her by becoming my lover. You don't deceive a woman like me, my
dear friend; unluckily, I am still too young and too good-looking to
accept the part that you offer me."

"So you refuse?"

"Yes.

"Would you rather take me for nothing? It is I who wouldn't accept then.
Think it over, my dear Olympe; if I had sent some one to offer you these
three hundred louis on my behalf, on the conditions I attach to them,
you would have accepted. I preferred to speak to you myself. Accept
without inquiring into my reasons; say to yourself that you are
beautiful, and that there is nothing surprising in my being in love with
you."

Marguerite was a woman in the same position as Olympe, and yet I should
never have dared say to her the first time I met her what I had said to
the other woman. I loved Marguerite. I saw in her instincts which were
lacking in the other, and at the very moment in which I made my bargain,
I felt a disgust toward the woman with whom I was making it.

She accepted, of course, in the end, and at midday I left her house as
her lover; but I quitted her without a recollection of the caresses
and of the words of love which she had felt bound to shower upon me in
return for the six thousand francs which I left with her. And yet there
were men who had ruined themselves for that woman.

From that day I inflicted on Marguerite a continual persecution. Olympe
and she gave up seeing one another, as you might imagine. I gave my
new mistress a carriage and jewels. I gambled, I committed every
extravagance which could be expected of a man in love with such a woman
as Olympe. The report of my new infatuation was immediately spread
abroad.

Prudence herself was taken in, and finally thought that I had completely
forgotten Marguerite. Marguerite herself, whether she guessed my motive
or was deceived like everybody else, preserved a perfect dignity in
response to the insults which I heaped upon her daily. Only, she seemed
to suffer, for whenever I met her she was more and more pale, more
and more sad. My love for her, carried to the point at which it was
transformed into hatred, rejoiced at the sight of her daily sorrow.
Often, when my cruelty toward her became infamous, Marguerite lifted
upon me such appealing eyes that I blushed for the part I was playing,
and was ready to implore her forgiveness.

But my repentance was only of a moment's duration, and Olympe, who had
finally put aside a