nt the proof before my eyes. The man who had loved Brigitte, who
had offended her, then insulted her, then abandoned her only to take her
back again, trembling with fear, beset with suspicion, finally thrown on
that bed of sorrow, where she now lay extended, was I!"

I beat my breast, and, although looking at her, I could not believe it. I
touched her as if to assure myself that it was not a dream. My face, as I
saw it in the glass, regarded me with astonishment. Who was that creature
who appeared before me bearing my features? Who was that pitiless man who
blasphemed with my mouth and tortured with my hands? Was it he whom my
mother called Octave? Was it he who, at fifteen, leaning over the crystal
waters of a fountain, had a heart not less pure than they? I closed my
eyes and thought of my childhood days. As a ray of light pierces a cloud,
a gleam from the past pierced my heart.

"No," I mused, "I did not do that. These things are but an absurd dream."

I recalled the time when I was ignorant of life, when I was taking my
first steps in experience. I remembered an old beggar who used to sit on
a stone bench before the farm gate, to whom I was sometimes sent with the
remains of our morning meal. Holding out his feeble, wrinkled hands he
would bless me as he smiled upon me. I felt the morning wind blowing on
my brow and a freshness as of the rose descending from heaven into my
soul. Then I opened my eyes and, by the light of the lamp, saw the
reality before me.

"And you do not believe yourself guilty?" I demanded, with horror. "O
novice of yesterday, how corrupt art thou today! Because you weep, you
fondly imagine yourself innocent? What you consider the evidence of your
conscience is only remorse; and what murderer does not experience it? If
your virtue cries out, is it not because it feels the approach of death?
O wretch! those far-off voices that you hear groaning in your heart, do
you think they are sobs? They are perhaps only the cry of the sea-mew,
that funereal bird of the tempest, whose presence portends shipwreck. Who
has ever told the story of the childhood of those who have died stained
with human blood? They, also, have been good in their day; they sometimes
bury their faces in their hands and think of those happy days. You do
evil, and you repent? Nero did the same when he killed his mother. Who
has told you that tears can wash away the stains of guilt?

"And even if it were true that a part of your sou