all such strategy of love occupies the
life, renews desire, and protects the heart against the palsy of
habit. But all young passions, being, like youth itself, essentially
spendthrift, raze their forests to the ground instead of merely cutting
the timber. Arabella adopted none of these bourgeois ideas, and yielded
to them only to please me; she wished to exhibit me to the eyes of all
Paris as her "sposo." She employed her powers of seduction to keep me
under her roof, for she was not content with a rumored scandal which,
for want of proof, was only whispered behind the fans. Seeing her so
happy in committing an imprudence which frankly admitted her position,
how could I help believing in her love?

But no sooner was I plunged into the comforts of illegal marriage
than despair seized upon me; I saw my life bound to a course in direct
defiance of the ideas and the advice given me by Henriette. Thenceforth
I lived in the sort of rage we find in consumptive patients who, knowing
their end is near, cannot endure that their lungs should be examined.
There was no corner in my heart where I could fly to escape suffering;
an avenging spirit filled me incessantly with thoughts on which I dared
not dwell. My letters to Henriette depicted this moral malady and did
her infinite harm. "At the cost of so many treasures lost, I wished you
to be at least happy," she wrote in the only answer I received. But
I was not happy. Dear Natalie, happiness is absolute; it allows of
no comparisons. My first ardor over, I necessarily compared the two
women,--a contrast I had never yet studied. In fact, all great passions
press so strongly on the character that at first they check its
asperities and cover the track of habits which constitute our defects
and our better qualities. But later, when two lovers are accustomed to
each other, the features of their moral physiognomies reappear; they
mutually judge each other, and it often happens during this reaction
of the character after passion, that natural antipathies leading to
disunion (which superficial people seize upon to accuse the human heart
of instability) come to the surface. This period now began with me.
Less blinded by seductions, and dissecting, as it were, my pleasure, I
undertook, without perhaps intending to do so, a critical examination of
Lady Dudley which resulted to her injury.

In the first place, I found her wanting in the qualities of mind which
distinguish Frenchwomen and mak