ngs.'

"'The present is yours,' I cried, 'but the future is mine! I only lose a
woman; you are losing a name and a family. Time is big with my revenge;
time will spoil your beauty, and yours will be a solitary death; and
glory waits for me!'

"'Thanks for your peroration!' she said, repressing a yawn; the wish
that she might never see me again was expressed in her whole bearing.

"That remark silenced me. I flung at her a glance full of hatred, and
hurried away.

"Foedora must be forgotten; I must cure myself of my infatuation, and
betake myself once more to my lonely studies, or die. So I set myself
tremendous tasks; I determined to complete my labors. For fifteen days I
never left my garret, spending whole nights in pallid thought. I worked
with difficulty, and by fits and starts, despite my courage and the
stimulation of despair. The music had fled. I could not exorcise the
brilliant mocking image of Foedora. Something morbid brooded over
every thought, a vague longing as dreadful as remorse. I imitated the
anchorites of the Thebaid. If I did not pray as they did, I lived a life
in the desert like theirs, hewing out my ideas as they were wont to hew
their rocks. I could at need have girdled my waist with spikes, that
physical suffering might quell mental anguish.

"One evening Pauline found her way into my room.

"'You are killing yourself,' she said imploringly; 'you should go out
and see your friends----'

"'Pauline, you were a true prophet; Foedora is killing me, I want to
die. My life is intolerable.'

"'Is there only one woman in the world?' she asked, smiling. 'Why make
yourself so miserable in so short a life?'

"I looked at Pauline in bewilderment. She left me before I noticed her
departure; the sound of her words had reached me, but not their
sense. Very soon I had to take my Memoirs in manuscript to my
literary-contractor. I was so absorbed by my passion, that I could not
remember how I had managed to live without money; I only knew that the
four hundred and fifty francs due to me would pay my debts. So I went
to receive my salary, and met Rastignac, who thought me changed and
thinner.

"'What hospital have you been discharged from?' he asked.

"'That woman is killing me,' I answered; 'I can neither despise her nor
forget her.'

"'You had much better kill her, then perhaps you would think no more of
her,' he said, laughing.

"'I have often thought of it,' I replied; 'but though sometimes th