all
three returned to Paris, taking an apartment in a quarter remote from
that in which we had before lodged, in order to avoid any, harassment
to which such small creditors as Duval had left behind him might
subject us. I resumed my studies with redoubled energy, and Louise was
necessarily left much alone with her poor father in the daytime. The
defects in her character became more and more visible. She reproached me
for the solitude to which I condemned her; our poverty galled her; she
had no kind greeting for me when I returned at evening, wearied out.
Before marriage she had not loved me; after marriage, alas! I fear she
hated. We had been returned to Paris some months when poor Duval died;
he had never recovered his faculties, nor had we ever learned from whom
his pension had been received. Very soon after her father's death I
observed a singular change in the humour and manner of Louise. She was
no longer peevish, irascible, reproachful; but taciturn and thoughtful.
She seemed to me under the influence of some suppressed excitement, her
cheeks flushed and her eye abstracted. At length, one evening when I
returned I found her gone. She did not come back that night nor the next
day. It was impossible for me to conjecture what had become of her.
She had no friends, so far as I knew; no one had visited at our squalid
apartment. The poor house in which we lodged had no concierge whom
I could question; but the ground-floor was occupied by a small
tobacconist's shop, and the woman at the counter told me that for some
days before my wife's disappearance, she had observed her pass the
shop-window in going out in the afternoon and returning towards the
evening. Two terrible conjectures beset me either in her walk she
had met some admirer, with whom she had fled; or, unable to bear the
companionship and poverty of a union which she had begun to loathe, she
had gone forth to drown herself in the Seine. On the third day from her
flight I received the letter I enclose. Possibly the handwriting may
serve you as a guide in the mission I intrust to you.

MONSIEUR,--You have deceived me vilely,--taken advantage of my
inexperienced youth and friendless position to decoy me into an
illegal marriage. My only consolation under my calamity and
disgrace is, that I am at least free from a detested bond. You will
not see me again,--it is idle to attempt to do so. I have obtained
refuge with relations whom I have been for