resemble? Am
I beautiful, enough to make you forget that any one can believe in love?
Have I a sufficiently careless air to suit you?" Then, in the midst of
that factitious joy, she would turn her back and I could see her shudder
until the flowers she had placed in her hair trembled. I threw myself at
her feet.

"Stop!" I cried, "you resemble only too closely that which you try to
imitate, that which my mouth has been so vile as to conjure up before
you. Lay aside those flowers and that dress. Let us wash away such
mimicry with a sincere tear; do not remind me that I am but a prodigal
son; I remember the past too well."

But even this repentance was cruel, as it proved to her that the
phantoms in my heart were full of reality. In yielding to an impulse
of horror I merely gave her to understand that her resignation and her
desire to please me only served to call up an impure image.

And it was true; I reached her side transported with joy, swearing that
I would regret my past life; on my knees I protested my respect for
her; then a gesture, a word, a trick of turning as she approached me,
recalled to my mind the fact that such and such a woman had made that
gesture, had used that word, had that same trick of turning.

Poor devoted soul! What didst thou suffer in seeing me turn pale before
thee, in seeing my arms fall as though lifeless at my side! When the
kiss died on my lips, and the full glance of love, that pure ray of
God's light, fled from my eyes like an arrow turned by the wind! Ah!
Brigitte! what diamonds trickled from thine eyes! What treasures of
charity didst thou exhaust with patient hand! How pitiful thy love!

For a long time good and bad days succeeded each other almost regularly;
I showed myself alternately cruel and scornful, tender and devoted,
insensible and haughty, repentant and submissive. The face of Desgenais,
which had at first appeared to me as though to warn me whither I
was drifting, was now constantly before me. On my days of doubt and
coldness, I conversed, so to speak, with him; often when I had offended
Brigitte by some cruel mockery I said to myself "If he were in my place
he would do as I do!"

And then at other times, when putting on my hat to visit Brigitte, I
would look in my glass and say: "What is there so terrible about it,
anyway? I have, after all, a pretty mistress; she has given herself to
a libertine, let her take me for what I am." I reached her side with
a smile on