ession a kiss.

She said that whatever I saw in her room that pleased my taste, whatever
bagatelle on her table attracted my attention, she would give me; that
whatever she did in the future, in the morning, in the evening, at any
hour, I should regulate as I pleased; that the judgments of the world did
not concern her; that if she had appeared to care for them, it was only
to send me away; but that she wished to be happy and close her ears, that
she was thirty years of age and had not long to be loved by me. "And you
will love me a long time? Are those fine words, with which you have
beguiled me, true?" And then loving reproaches because I had been late in
coming to her; that she had put on her slippers in order that I might see
her foot, but that she was no longer beautiful; that she could wish she
were; that she had been at fifteen. She went here and there, silly with
love, rosy with joy; and she did not know what to imagine, what to say or
do, in order to give herself and all that she had.

I was lying on the sofa; I felt, at every word she spoke, a bad hour of
my past life slipping away from me. I watched the star of love rising in
my sky, and it seemed to me I was like a tree filled with sap that shakes
off its dry leaves in order to attire itself in new foliage. She sat down
at the piano and told me she was going to play an air by Stradella. More
than all else I love sacred music, and that morceau which she had sung
for me a number of times gave me great pleasure.

"Yes," she said when she had finished, "but you are very much mistaken,
the air is mine, and I have made you believe it was Stradella's."

"It is yours?"

"Yes, and I told you it was by Stradella in order to see what you would
say of it. I never play my own music when I happen to compose any; but I
wanted to try it with you, and you see it has succeeded since you were
deceived."

What a monstrous machine is man! What could be more innocent? A bright
child might have adopted that ruse to surprise his teacher. She laughed
heartily the while, but I felt a strange coldness as if a dark cloud had
settled on me; my countenance changed:

"What is the matter?" she asked. "Are you ill?"

"It is nothing; play that air again."

While she was playing I walked up and down the room; I passed my hand
over my forehead as if to brush away the fog; I stamped my foot, shrugged
my shoulders at my own madness; finally I sat down on a cushion which had
fallen to t