ry crimes and avenge on me the wrong done you by others, than
when you are under the influence of that frightful gayety, when you
assume that air of hideous mockery, when that mask of scorn affronts my
eyes.

"Tell me, Octave, why that? Why those moments when you speak of love with
contempt and rail at the most sacred mysteries of love? What frightful
power over your irritable nerves has that life you have led, that such
insults should mount to your lips in spite of you? Yes, in spite of you;
for your heart is noble, you blush at your own blasphemy; you love me too
much, not to suffer when you see me suffer. Ah! I know you now. The first
time I saw you thus, I was seized with a feeling of terror of which I can
give you no idea. I thought you were only a roue, that you had
deliberately deceived me by feigning a love you did not feel, and that I
saw you such as you really were. O my friend! I thought it was time to
die; what a night I passed! You do not know my life; you do not know that
I who speak to you have had an experience as terrible as yours. Alas!
life is sweet only to those who do not know life.

"You are not, my dear Octave, the only man I have loved. There is hidden
in my heart a fatal story that I wish you to know. My father destined me,
when I was quite young, for the only son of an old friend. They were
neighbors and each owned a little domain of almost equal value. The two
families saw each other every day, and lived, so to speak, together. My
father died; my mother had been dead some time. I lived with the aunt
whom you know. A journey she was compelled to take forced her to confide
me to the care of my future father-in-law. He called me his daughter, and
it was so well known about the country that I was to marry his son that
we were allowed the greatest liberty together.

"That young man, whose name you need not know, appeared to love me. What
had been friendship from infancy became love in time. He began to tell me
of the happiness that awaited us; he spoke of his impatience, I was only
one year younger than he; but he had made the acquaintance of a man of
dissipated habits who lived in the vicinity, a sort of adventurer, and
had listened to his evil suggestions. While I was yielding to his
caresses with the confidence of a child, he resolved to deceive his
father, and to abandon me after he had ruined me.

"His father called us into his room one evening and, in the presence of
the family, set the da