without writing to her. I made and remade twenty letters in my head. I
had had to do with a woman like all other women of the kind. I had been
poetizing too much. She had treated me like a school-boy, she had used
in deceiving me a trick which was insultingly simple. My self-esteem
got the upper hand. I must leave this woman without giving her the
satisfaction of knowing that she had made me suffer, and this is what I
wrote to her in my most elegant handwriting and with tears of rage and
sorrow in my eyes:

"MY DEAR MARGUERITE: I hope that your indisposition yesterday was not
serious. I came, at eleven at night, to ask after you, and was told
that you had not come in. M. de G. was more fortunate, for he presented
himself shortly afterward, and at four in the morning he had not left.

"Forgive me for the few tedious hours that I have given you, and be
assured that I shall never forget the happy moments which I owe to you.

"I should have called to-day to ask after you, but I intend going back
to my father's.

"Good-bye, my dear Marguerite. I am not rich enough to love you as I
would nor poor enough to love you as you would. Let us then forget, you
a name which must be indifferent enough to you, I a happiness which has
become impossible.

"I send back your key, which I have never used, and which might be
useful to you, if you are often ill as you were yesterday."

As you will see, I was unable to end my letter without a touch of
impertinent irony, which proved how much in love I still was.

I read and reread this letter ten times over; then the thought of the
pain it would give to Marguerite calmed me a little. I tried to persuade
myself of the feelings which it professed; and when my servant came to
my room at eight o'clock, I gave it to him and told him to take it at
once.

"Shall I wait for an answer?" asked Joseph (my servant, like all
servants, was called Joseph).

"If they ask whether there is a reply, you will say that you don't know,
and wait."

I buoyed myself up with the hope that she would reply. Poor, feeble
creatures that we are! All the time that my servant was away I was in a
state of extreme agitation. At one moment I would recall how Marguerite
had given herself to me, and ask myself by what right I wrote her an
impertinent letter, when she could reply that it was not M. de G. who
supplanted me, but I who had supplanted M. de G.: a mode of reasoning
which permits many women to have many love