ood-breeding. But before
long I fell into the furnace of an unexpected misery. My money was
disappearing under these losses. Though the count was always present
during my visits until I left the house, which was sometimes very late,
I cherished the hope of finding some moment when I might say a word
that would reach my idol's heart; but to obtain that moment, for which
I watched and waited with a hunter's painful patience, I was forced to
continue these weary games, during which my feelings were lacerated and
my money lost. Still, there were moments when we were silent, she and
I, looking at the sunlight on the meadows, the clouds in a gray sky, the
misty hills, or the quivering of the moon on the sandbanks of the river;
saying only, "Night is beautiful!"

"Night is woman, madame."

"What tranquillity!"

"Yes, no one can be absolutely wretched here."

Then she would return to her embroidery frame. I came at last to hear
the inward beatings of an affection which sought its object. But the
fact remained--without money, farewell to these evenings. I wrote to my
mother to send me some. She scolded me and sent only enough to last a
week. Where could I get more? My life depended on it. Thus it happened
that in the dawn of my first great happiness I found the same sufferings
that assailed me elsewhere; but in Paris, at college, at school I evaded
them by abstinence; there my privations were negative, at Frapesle they
were active; so active that I was possessed by the impulse to theft, by
visions of crime, furious desperations which rend the soul and must
be subdued under pain of losing our self-respect. The memory of what
I suffered through my mother's parsimony taught me that indulgence
for young men which one who has stood upon the brink of the abyss and
measured its depths, without falling into them, must inevitably feel.
Though my own rectitude was strengthened by those moments when life
opened and let me see the rocks and quicksands beneath the surface, I
have never known that terrible thing called human justice draw its blade
through the throat of a criminal without saying to myself: "Penal laws
are made by men who have never known misery."

At this crisis I happened to find a treatise on backgammon in Monsieur
de Chessel's library, and I studied it. My host was kind enough to give
me a few lessons; less harshly taught by the count I made good progress
and applied the rules and calculations I knew by heart. Within a