eep. The father allows his son to go where so many others go,
where Cato himself went; he says that youth is but fleeting. But when he
returns, the youth looks upon his sister; and see what has taken place in
him during an hour passed in the society of brutal reality! He says to
himself: "My sister is not like that creature I have just left!" And from
that day he is disturbed and uneasy.

Sinful curiosity is a vile malady born of impure contact. It is the
prowling instinct of phantoms who raise the lids of tombs; it is an
inexplicable torture with which God punishes those who have sinned; they
wish to believe that all sin as they have done, and would be disappointed
perhaps to find that it was not so. But they inquire, they search, they
dispute; they wag their heads from side to side as does an architect who
adjusts a column, and thus strive to find what they desire to find. Given
proof of evil, they laugh at it; doubtful of evil, they swear that it
exists; the good they refuse to recognize. "Who knows?" Behold the grand
formula, the first words that Satan spoke when he saw heaven closing
against him. Alas! for how many evils are those words responsible? How
many disasters and deaths, how many strokes of fateful scythes in the
ripening harvest of humanity! How many hearts, how many families where
there is naught but ruin, since that word was first heard! "Who knows!
Who knows!" Loathsome words! Rather than pronounce them one should be as
sheep who graze about the slaughter-house and know it not. That is better
than to be called a strong spirit, and to read La Rochefoucauld.

What better illustration could I present than the one I have just given?
My mistress was ready to set out and I had but to say the word. Why did I
delay? What would have been the result if I had started at once on our
trip? Nothing but a moment of apprehension that would have been forgotten
after travelling three days. When with me, she had no thought but of me;
why should I care to solve a mystery that did not threaten my happiness?

She would have consented, and that would have been the end of it. A kiss
on her lips and all would be well; instead of that, see what I did.

One evening when Smith had dined with us, I retired at an early hour and
left them together. As I closed my door I heard Brigitte order some tea.
In the morning I happened to approach her table, and, sitting beside the
teapot, I saw but one cup. No one had been in that room befo