law, and by swerving from our duties. If I threw
myself at her feet to obtain by anticipation her forgiveness for the
loving violence I intended to use against her, she would repulse me more
powerfully than if she had had the strength of a female Hercules, for she
would say, in a voice full of sweetness and affection,

"My friend, I do not entreat you to respect my weakness, but be generous
enough to spare me for the sake of all the love I feel for you."

"What! you love me, and you refuse to make me happy! It is impossible! it
is unnatural. You compel me to believe that you do not love me. Only
allow me to press my lips one moment upon your lips, and I ask no more."

"No, dearest, no; it would only excite the ardour of your desires, shake
my resolution, and we should then find ourselves more miserable than we
are now."

Thus did she every day plunge me in despair, and yet she complained that
my wit was no longer brilliant in society, that I had lost that
elasticity of spirits which had pleased her so much after my arrival from
Constantinople. M. D---- R-----, who often jestingly waged war against me,
used to say that I was getting thinner and thinner every day. Madame
F---- told me one day that my sickly looks were very disagreeable to her,
because wicked tongues would not fail to say that she treated me with
cruelty. Strange, almost unnatural thought! On it I composed an idyll
which I cannot read, even now, without feeling tears in my eyes.

"What!" I answered, "you acknowledge your cruelty towards me? You are
afraid of the world guessing all your heartless rigour, and yet you
continue to enjoy it! You condemn me unmercifully to the torments of
Tantalus! You would be delighted to see me gay, cheerful, happy, even at
the expense of a judgment by which the world would find you guilty of a
supposed but false kindness towards me, and yet you refuse me even the
slightest favours!"

"I do not mind people believing anything, provided it is not true."

"What a contrast! Would it be possible for me not to love you, for you to
feel nothing for me? Such contradictions strike me as unnatural. But you
are growing thinner yourself, and I am dying. It must be so; we shall
both die before long, you of consumption, I of exhausting decline; for I
am now reduced to enjoying your shadow during the day, during the night,
always, everywhere, except when I am in your presence."

At that passionate declaration, delivered with all the