d thought of leaving the country, of
fleeing from her love; how she had employed every precaution against
me; how she had sought advice from her aunt, from Mercanson and from the
cure; how she had vowed to herself that she would die rather than yield,
and how all that had been dissipated by a single word of mine, a glance,
an incident; and with every confession a kiss.

She said that whatever I saw in her room that pleased my taste, whatever
bagatelle on her table attracted my attention, she would give me; that
whatever she did in the future, in the morning, in the evening, at any
hour, I should regulate as I pleased; that the judgments of the world
did not concern her; that if she had appeared to care for them, it was
only to send me away; but that she wished to be happy and close her
ears, that she was thirty years of age and had not long to be loved by
me. "And you will love me a long time? Are those fine words, with which
you have beguiled me, true?" And then loving reproaches because I had
been late in coming to her; that she had put on her slippers in order
that I might see her foot, but that she was no longer beautiful; that
she could wish she were; that she had been at fifteen. She went here
and there, silly with love, rosy with joy; and she did not know what to
imagine, what to say or do, in order to give herself and all that she
had.

I was lying on the sofa; I felt, at every word she spoke, a bad hour of
my past life slipping away from me. I watched the star of love rising
in my sky, and it seemed to me I was like a tree filled with sap that
shakes off its dry leaves in order to attire itself in new foliage.
She sat down at the piano and told me she was going to play an air by
Stradella. More than all else I love sacred music, and that morceau
which she had sung for me a number of times gave me great pleasure.

"Yes," she said when she had finished, "but you are very much mistaken,
the air is mine, and I have made you believe it was Stradella's."

"It is yours?"

"Yes, and I told you it was by Stradella in order to see what you would
say of it. I never play my own music when I happen to compose any; but
I wanted to try it with you, and you see it has succeeded since you were
deceived."

What a monstrous machine is man! What could be more innocent? A bright
child might have adopted that ruse to surprise his teacher. She laughed
heartily the while, but I felt a strange coldness as if a dark cloud had
set