ceived you most cruelly, since it is
in vain that I am faithful!

"And the others, those wretches who then poisoned your youth! The
pleasures they sold must have been terrible since you ask me to imitate
them! You remember them with me! Alas! my dear child, that is too cruel.
I like you better when you are unjust and furious, when you reproach me
for imaginary crimes and avenge on me the wrong done you by others,
than when you are under the influence of that frightful gayety, when you
assume that air of hideous mockery, when that mask of scorn affronts my
eyes.

"Tell me, Octave, why that? Why those moments when you speak of love
with contempt and rail at the most sacred mysteries of love? What
frightful power over your irritable nerves has that life you have led,
that such insults should mount to your lips in spite of you? Yes, in
spite of you; for your heart is noble, you blush at your own blasphemy;
you love me too much, not to suffer when you see me suffer. Ah! I know
you now. The first time I saw you thus, I was seized with a feeling of
terror of which I can give you no idea. I thought you were only a roue,
that you had deliberately deceived me by feigning a love you did not
feel, and that I saw you such as you really were. O my friend! I thought
it was time to die; what a night I passed! You do not know my life; you
do not know that I who speak to you have had an experience as terrible
as yours. Alas! life is sweet only to those who do not know life.

"You are not, my dear Octave, the only man I have loved. There is hidden
in my heart a fatal story that I wish you to know. My father destined
me, when I was quite young, for the only son of an old friend. They were
neighbors and each owned a little domain of almost equal value. The two
families saw each other every day, and lived, so to speak, together. My
father died; my mother had been dead some time. I lived with the aunt
whom you know. A journey she was compelled to take forced her to confide
me to the care of my future father-in-law. He called me his daughter,
and it was so well known about the country that I was to marry his son
that we were allowed the greatest liberty together.

"That young man, whose name you need not know, appeared to love me. What
had been friendship from infancy became love in time. He began to tell
me of the happiness that awaited us; he spoke of his impatience, I was
only one year younger than he; but he had made the acquaintance of