, seductive songs of the Sirens, difficult only
to touch that pretty table covered with a perfectly new cloth, at which
you are invited to take a seat before any one else, in such a suggestive
voice, and are requested to quench your thirst and to taste that new
wine, whose fresh and strange flavor you will never forget. But who
would hesitate to exercise such self-restraint if, when he rapidly
examines his conscience, in one of those instinctive returns to his
sober self in which a man thinks clearly and recovers his head, he
were to measure the gravity of his fault, consider it, think of its
consequences, of the reprisals, of the uneasiness which he would always
feel in the future, and which would destroy the repose and happiness of
his life?

"You may guess that behind all these moral reflections, such as a
graybeard like myself may indulge in, there is a story hidden, and,
sad as it is, I am sure it will interest you on account of the strange
heroism it shows."

He was silent for a few moments, as if to classify his recollections,
and, with his elbows resting on the arms of his easy-chair and his
eyes looking into space, he continued in the slow voice of a hospital
professor who is explaining a case to his class of medical students, at
a bedside:

"He was one of those men who, as our grandfathers used to say, never met
with a cruel woman, the type of the adventurous knight who was always
foraging, who had something of the scamp about him, but who despised
danger and was bold even to rashness. He was ardent in the pursuit of
pleasure, and had an irresistible charm about him, one of those men in
whom we excuse the greatest excesses as the most natural things in the
world. He had run through all his money at gambling and with pretty
girls, and so became, as it were, a soldier of fortune. He amused
himself whenever and however he could, and was at that time quartered at
Versailles.

"I knew him to the very depths of his childlike heart, which was
only too easily seen through and sounded, and I loved him as some old
bachelor uncle loves a nephew who plays him tricks, but who knows how to
coax him. He had made me his confidant rather than his adviser, kept
me informed of his slightest pranks, 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