hipped me until I cannot stand; forgive me,
monseigneur, forgive me now!"

"I have forgiven you, but I never wish to see you again, lest I should
forget that I have forgiven you. Take him away, some of you," I bade my
men, and in swift, silent obedience two of them stepped forward and bore
the groaning, sobbing fellow from the room. When that was done "Host," I
commanded, "prepare me a room. Attend me, a couple of you."

I gave orders thereafter for the disposal of my baggage, some of which
my lacqueys brought up to the chamber that the landlord had in haste
made ready for me. In that chamber I sat until very late; a prey to the
utmost misery and despair. My rage being spent, I might have taken some
thought for poor Ganymede and his condition, but my own affairs crowded
over-heavily upon my mind, and sat the undisputed rulers of my thoughts
that night.

At one moment I considered journeying to Lavedan, only to dismiss the
idea the next. What could it avail me now? Would Roxalanne believe the
tale I had to tell? Would she not think, naturally enough, that I was
but making the best of the situation, and that my avowal of the truth
of a story which it was not in my power to deny was not spontaneous, but
forced from me by circumstances? No, there was nothing more to be done.
A score of amours had claimed my attention in the past and received
it; yet there was not one of those affairs whose miscarriage would have
afforded me the slightest concern or mortification. It seemed like an
irony, like a Dies ire, that it should have been left to this first true
passion of my life to have gone awry.

I slept ill when at last I sought my bed, and through the night I nursed
my bitter grief, huddling to me the corpse of the love she had borne me
as a mother may the corpse of her first-born.

On the morrow I resolved to leave Toulouse--to quit this province
wherein so much had befallen me and repair to Beaugency, there to grow
old in misanthropical seclusion. I had done with Courts, I had done
with love and with women; I had done, it seemed to me, with life itself.
Prodigal had it been in gifts that I had not sought of it. It had spread
my table with the richest offerings, but they had been little to my
palate, and I had nauseated quickly. And now, when here in this remote
corner of France it had shown me the one prize I coveted, it had been
swift to place it beyond my reach, thereby sowing everlasting discontent
and misery in my hi