ow what has made him abandon me as if a pestilence were in my house.
We are not friends to quarrel about a woman," he said, looking intently
at Clementine. "You heard what he said yesterday about Malaga. Well, he
has never so much as touched the little finger of that girl."

"How do you know that?" said Clementine.

"I had the natural curiosity to go and see Mademoiselle Turquet, and
the poor girl can't explain even to herself the absolute reserve which
Thad--"

"Enough!" said the countess, retreating into her bedroom. "Can it be
that I am the victim of some noble mystification?" she asked herself.
The thought had hardly crossed her mind when Constantin brought her the
following letter written by Thaddeus during the night:--

"Countess,--To seek death in the Caucasus and carry with me your
contempt is more than I can bear. A man should die untainted. When
I saw you for the first time I loved you as we love a woman whom
we shall love forever, even though she be unfaithful to us. I
loved you thus,--I, the friend of the man you had chosen and were
about to marry; I, poor; I, the steward,--a voluntary service, but
still the steward of your household.

"In this immense misfortune I found a happy life. To be to you an
indispensable machine, to know myself useful to your comfort, your
luxury, has been the source of deep enjoyments. If these
enjoyments were great when I thought only of Adam, think what they
were to my soul when the woman I loved was the mainspring of all I
did. I have known the pleasures of maternity in my love. I
accepted life thus. Like the paupers who live along the great
highways, I built myself a hut on the borders of your beautiful
domain, though I never sought to approach you. Poor and lonely,
struck blind by Adam's good fortune, I was, nevertheless, the
giver. Yes, you were surrounded by a love as pure as a
guardian-angel's; it waked while you slept; it caressed you with a
look as you passed; it was happy in its own existence,--you were
the sun of my native land to me, poor exile, who now writes to you
with tears in his eyes as he thinks of the happiness of those first
days.

"When I was eighteen years old, having no one to love, I took for
my ideal mistress a charming woman in Warsaw, to whom I confided
all my thoughts, my wishes; I made her the queen of my nights and
days. She knew nothing of all this; why should she? I loved my
love.