st
life and had never questioned her about it. I had yielded to my love for
her with confidence and without reservation. I found a sort of pleasure
in taking her just as she was, for just what she seemed, while suspicion
and jealousy are so foreign to my nature that I was more surprised at
feeling them toward Brigitte than she was in discovering them in me.
Never in my first love nor in the affairs of daily life have I been
distrustful, but on the contrary bold and frank, suspecting nothing. I
had to see my mistress betray me before my eyes before I would believe
that she could deceive me. Desgenais himself, while preaching to me
after his manner, joked me about the ease with which I could be duped.
The story of my life was an incontestable proof that I was credulous
rather than suspicious; and when the words in that book suddenly struck
me, it seemed to me I felt a new being within me, a sort of unknown
self; my reason revolted against the feeling, and I did not dare ask
whither all this was leading me.

But the suffering I had endured, the memory of the perfidy that I had
witnessed, the frightful cure I had imposed on myself, the opinions of
my friends, the corrupt life I had led, the sad truths I had learned,
as well as those that I had unconsciously surmised during my sad
experience, ending in debauchery, contempt of love, abuse of everything,
that is what I had in my heart although I did not suspect it; and at
the moment when life and hope were again being born within me, all these
furies that were being atrophied by time seized me by the throat and
cried that they were yet alive.

I bent over and opened the book, then immediately closed it and threw
it on the table. Brigitte was looking at me; in her beautiful eyes was
neither wounded pride nor anger; nothing but tender solicitude, as if I
were ill.

"Do you think I have secrets?" she asked, embracing me.

"No," I replied, "I know nothing except that you are beautiful and that
I would die loving you."

When I returned home to dinner I said to Larive:

"Who is Madame Pierson?"

He looked at me in astonishment.

"You have lived here many years," I continued; "you ought to know better
than I. What do they say of her here? What do they think of her in the
village? What kind of life did she lead before I knew her? Whom did she
receive as her friends?"

"In faith, sir, I have never seen her do otherwise than she does every
day, that is to say, walk in the va