oks 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 ardour of an
excited lover, she was surprised, deeply moved, and I thought that the
happy hour had struck. I folded her in my arms, and was already tasting
the first fruits of enjoyment. . . . The sentinel knocked twice! . . . Oh!
fatal mischance! I recovered my composure and stood in front of her. . . .
M. D---- R---- made his appearance, and this time he found me in so
cheerful a mood that he remained with us until one o'clock in the
morning.

My comfits were beginning to be the talk of our society. M. D---- R-----,
Madame F----, and I were the only ones who had a box full of them. I was
stingy with them, and no one durst beg any from me, because I had said
that they were very expensive, and that in all Corfu there was no
confectioner who could make or physician who could analyse them. I never
gave one out of my crystal box, and Madame F. remarked it. I certainly
did not believe them to be amorous philtre, and I was very far from
supposing that the addition of the hair made them taste more delicious;
but a superstition, the offspring of my love, caused me to cherish them,
and it made me happy to think that a small portion of the woman I
worshipped was thus becoming a part of my being.

Influenced perhaps by