Looking back with my present wretched knowledge, I conclude that
her vanity and love of power were intensely gratified by the belief that
I had fainted on first seeing her purely from the strong impression her
person had produced on me. The most prosaic woman likes to believe
herself the object of a violent, a poetic passion; and without a grain of
romance in her, Bertha had that spirit of intrigue which gave piquancy to
the idea that the brother of the man she meant to marry was dying with
love and jealousy for her sake. That she meant to marry my brother, was
what at that time I did not believe; for though he was assiduous in his
attentions to her, and I knew well enough that both he and my father had
made up their minds to this result, there was not yet an understood
engagement--there had been no explicit declaration; and Bertha
habitually, while she flirted with my brother, and accepted his homage in
a way that implied to him a thorough recognition of its intention, made
me believe, by the subtlest looks and phrases--feminine nothings which
could never be quoted against her--that he was really the object of her
secret ridicule; that she thought him, as I did, a coxcomb, whom she
would have pleasure in disappointing. Me she openly petted in my
brother's presence, as if I were too young and sickly ever to be thought
of as a lover; and that was the view he took of me. But I believe she
must inwardly have delighted in the tremors into which she threw me by
the coaxing way in which she patted my curls, while she laughed at my
quotations. Such caresses were always given in the presence of our
friends; for when we were alone together, she affected a much greater
distance towards me, and now and then took the opportunity, by words or
slight actions, to stimulate my foolish timid hope that she really
preferred me. And why should she not follow her inclination? I was not
in so advantageous a position as my brother, but I had fortune, I was not
a year younger than she was, and she was an heiress, who would soon be of
age to decide for herself.

The fluctuations of hope and fear, confined to this one channel, made
each day in her presence a delicious torment. There was one deliberate
act of hers which especially helped to intoxicate me. When we were at
Vienna her twentieth birthday occurred, and as she was very fond of
ornaments, we all took the opportunity of the splendid jewellers' shops
in that Teutonic Paris to pur