is
happiness with your own.

"I tell you, woman, every man like me, who abuses your vanity and your
weakness and afterward tells you he esteems you--lies! And if after all
you still believe he loves you, you do yourself fresh injury. No: we soon
learn to hate those irksome ties that become duties where we only sought
pleasures; and the first effort after they are formed is to shatter them.

"As for the rest: women like you are not made for unholy love like ours.
Their charm is their purity, and losing that, they lose everything. But
it is a blessing to them to encounter one wretch, like myself, who cares
to say--Forget me, forever! Farewell!"

He left her, passed from the room with rapid strides, and, slamming the
door behind him, disappeared. Madame Lescande, who had listened,
motionless, and pale as marble, remained in the same lifeless attitude,
her eyes fixed, her hands clenched--yearning from the depths of her heart
that death would summon her. Suddenly a singular noise, seeming to come
from the next room, struck her ear. It was only a convulsive sob, or
violent and smothered laughter. The wildest and most terrible ideas
crowded to the mind of the unhappy woman; the foremost of them, that her
husband had secretly returned, that he knew all--that his brain had given
way, and that the laughter was the gibbering of his madness.

Feeling her own brain begin to reel, she sprang from the sofa, and
rushing to the door, threw it open. The next apartment was the
dining-room, dimly lighted by a hanging lamp. There she saw Camors,
crouched upon the floor, sobbing furiously and beating his forehead
against a chair which he strained in a convulsive embrace. Her tongue
refused its office; she could find no word, but seating herself near him,
gave way to her emotion, and wept silently. He dragged himself nearer,
seized the hem of her dress and covered it with kisses; his breast heaved
tumultuously, his lips trembled and he gasped the almost inarticulate
words, "Pardon! Oh, pardon me!"

This was all. Then he rose suddenly, rushed from the house, and the
instant after she heard the rolling of the wheels as his carriage whirled
him away.

If there were no morals and no remorse, French people would perhaps be
happier. But unfortunately it happens that a young woman, who believes in
little, like Madame Lescande, and a young man who believes in nothing,
like M. de Camors, can not have the pleasures of an independent code of
mora