than his adviser, kept me informed of his
slightest tricks, though he always pretended to be speaking about one of
his friends, and not about himself, and I must confess that his youthful
impetuosity, his careless gaiety and his amorous ardor sometimes
distracted my thoughts and made me envy the handsome, vigorous young
fellow who was so happy at being alive, so that I had not the courage to
check him, to show him his right road, and to call out to him, 'Take
care!' as children do at blind man's buff.

"And one day, after one of those interminable _cotillons_, where the
couples do not leave each other for hours, but have the bridle on their
neck and can disappear together without anybody thinking of taking
notice of it, the poor fellow at last discovered what love was, that
real love which takes up its abode in the very center of the heart and
in the brain, and is proud of being there, and which rules like a
sovereign and tyrannous master, and so he grew desperately enamored of a
pretty, but badly brought up girl, who was as disquieting and as wayward
as she was pretty.

"She loved him, however, or rather she idolized him despotically, madly,
with all her enraptured soul, and all her excited person. Left to do as
she pleased by imprudent and frivolous parents, suffering from neurosis,
in consequence of the unwholesome friendships which she contracted at
the convent-school, instructed by what she saw and heard and knew was
going on around her, in spite of her deceitful and artificial conduct,
knowing that neither her father nor her mother, who were very proud of
their race, as well as avaricious, would ever agree to let her marry the
man whom she had taken a liking to, that handsome fellow who had little
besides visionary ideas and debts, and who belonged to the middle
classes, she laid aside all scruples, thought of nothing but of
belonging to him altogether, of taking him for her lover, and of
triumphing over his desperate resistance as an honorable man.

"By degrees, the unfortunate man's strength gave way, his heart grew
softened, his nerves became excited, and he allowed himself to be
carried away by that current which buffeted him, surrounded him and left
him on the shore like a waif and a stray.

"They wrote letters full of temptation and of madness to each other, and
not a day passed without their meeting, either accidentally, as it
seemed, or at parties and balls. She had given him her lips in long,
ardent c