u are invited
to take a seat before any one else, in such a suggestive voice, and are
requested to quench your thirst and to taste that new wine, whose fresh
and strange flavor you will never forget. But who would hesitate to
exercise such self-restraint if, when he rapidly examines his conscience,
in one of those instinctive returns to his sober self in which a man
thinks clearly and recovers his head, he were to measure the gravity of
his fault, consider it, think of its consequences, of the reprisals, of
the uneasiness which he would always feel in the future, and which would
destroy the repose and happiness of his life?

"You may guess that behind all these moral reflections, such as a
graybeard like myself may indulge in, there is a story hidden, and, sad
as it is, I am sure it will interest you on account of the strange
heroism it shows."

He was silent for a few moments, as if to classify his recollections,
and, with his elbows resting on the arms of his easy-chair and his eyes
looking into space, he continued in the slow voice of a hospital
professor who is explaining a case to his class of medical students, at a
bedside:

"He was one of those men who, as our grandfathers used to say, never met
with a cruel woman, the type of the adventurous knight who was always
foraging, who had something of the scamp about him, but who despised
danger and was bold even to rashness. He was ardent in the pursuit of
pleasure, and had an irresistible charm about him, one of those men in
whom we excuse the greatest excesses as the most natural things in the
world. He had run through all his money at gambling and with pretty
girls, and so became, as it were, a soldier of fortune. He amused himself
whenever and however he could, and was at that time quartered at
Versailles.

"I knew him to the very depths of his childlike heart, which was only too
easily seen through and sounded, and I loved him as some old bachelor
uncle loves a nephew who plays him tricks, but who knows how to coax him.
He had made me his confidant rather than his adviser, kept me informed of
his slightest pranks, though he always pretended to be speaking about one
of his friends, and not about himself; and I must confess that his
youthful impetuosity, his careless gaiety, and his amorous ardor
sometimes distracted my thoughts and made me envy the handsome, vigorous
young fellow who was so happy at being alive, that I had not the courage
to check him, to show