by slow degrees I became politely civil; and one day, by a sort of

tacit agreement between us, she allowed me to treat her as a stranger,
and I thought that I had done all that could be expected of me.

Nevertheless I abandoned myself to my new life with almost frenzied
eagerness, and sought to drown in gaiety any vague lingering remorse

that I felt. A man who has lost his self-respect cannot endure his own
society, so I led the dissipated life that wealthy" target="_blank" title="a.富有的；丰富的">wealthy young men lead in

Paris. Owing to a good education and an excellent memory, I seemed
cleverer than I really was, forthwith I looked down upon other people;

and those who, for their own purposes, wished to prove to me that I
was possessed of extraordinary abilities, found me quite convinced on

that head. Praise is the most insidious of all methods of treachery
known to the world; and this is nowhere better understood than in

Paris, where intriguing schemers know how to stifle every kind of
talent at its birth by heaping laurels on its cradle. So I did nothing

worthy of my reputation; I reaped no advantages from the golden
opinions entertained of me, and made no acquaintances likely to be

useful in my future career. I wasted my energies in numberless
frivolous pursuits, and in the short-lived love intrigues that are the

disgrace of salons in Paris, where every one seeks for love, grows
blase in the pursuit, falls into the libertinism sanctioned by polite

society, and ends by feeling as much astonished at real passion as the
world is over a heroic action. I did as others did. Often I dealt to

generous and candid souls the deadly wound from which I myself was
slowly perishing. Yet though deceptive appearances might lead others

to misjudge me, I could never overcome my scrupulous delicacy. Many
times I have been duped, and should have blushed for myself had it

been otherwise; I secretly prided myself on acting in good faith,
although this lowered me in the eyes of others. As a matter of fact

the world has a considerable respect for cleverness, whatever form it
takes, and success justifies everything. So the world was pleased to

attribute to me all the good qualities and evil propensities, all the
victories and defeats which had never been mine; credited me with

conquests of which I knew nothing, and sat in judgment upon actions of
which I had never been guilty. I scorned to contradict the slanders,

and self-love led me to regard the more flattering rumors with a
certain complacence. Outwardly my existence was pleasant enough, but

in reality I was miserable. If it had not been for the tempest of
misfortunes that very soon burst over my head, all good impulses must

have perished, and evil would have triumphed in the struggle that went
on within me; enervating self-indulgence would have destroyed the

body, as the detestable habits of egotism exhausted the springs of the
soul. But I was ruined financially. This was how it came about.

"No matter how large his fortune may be, a man is sure to find some
one else in Paris possessed of yet greater wealth, whom he must needs

aim at surpassing. In this unequalconquest I was vanquished at the
end of four years; and, like many another harebrained youngster, I was

obliged to sell part of my property and to mortgage the remainder to
satisfy my creditors. Then a terrible blow suddenly struck me down.

"Two years had passed since I had last seen the woman whom I had
deserted. The turn that my affairs were taking would no doubt have

brought me back to her once more; but one evening, in the midst of a
gay circle of acquaintances, I received a note written in a trembling

hand. It only contained these few words:
" 'I have only a very little while to live, and I should like to see

you, my friend, so that I may know what will become of my child--
whether henceforward he will be yours; and also to soften the regret

that some day you might perhaps feel for my death.'
"The letter made me shudder. It was a revelation of secret anguish in

the past, while it contained a whole unknown future. I set out on
foot, I would not wait for my carriage, I went across Paris, goaded by

remorse, and gnawed by a dreadful fear that was confirmed by the first
sight of my victim. In the extreme neatness and cleanliness beneath

which she had striven to hid her poverty I read all the terrible
sufferings of her life; she was nobly reticent about them in her

effort to spare my feelings, and only alluded to them after I had
solemnly promised to adopt our child. She died, sir, in spite of all

the care lavished upon her, and all that science could suggest was
done for her in vain. The care and devotion that had come too late

only served to render her last moments less bitter.
"To support her little one she had worked incessantly with her needle.

Love for her child had given her strength to endure her life of
hardship; but it had not enabled her to bear my desertion, the keenest

of all her griefs. Many times she had thought of trying to see me, but
her woman's pride had always prevented this. While I squandered floods

of gold upon my caprices, no memory of the past had ever bidden a
single drop to fall in her home to help mother and child to live; but

she had been content to weep, and had not cursed me; she had looked
upon her evil fortune as the natural punishment of her error. With the

aid of a good priest of Saint Sulpice, whose kindly voice had restored
peace to her soul, she had sought for hope in the shadow of the altar,

whither she had gone to dry her tears. The bitter flood that I had
poured into her heart gradually abated; and one day, when she heard

her child say 'Father,' a word that she had not taught him, she
forgave my crime. But sorrow and weeping and days and nights of

ceaseless toil injured her health. Religion had brought its
consolations and the courage to bear the ills of life, but all too

late. She fell ill of a heart complaint brought on by grief and by the
strain of expectation, for she always thought that I should return,

and her hopes always sprang up afresh after every disappointment. Her
health grew worse; and at last, as she was lying on her deathbed, she

wrote those few lines, containing no word of reproach, prompted by
religion, and by a belief in the goodness in my nature. She knew, she

said, that I was blinded rather than bent on doing wrong. She even
accused herself of carrying her womanly pride too far. 'If I had only

written sooner,' she said, 'perhaps there might have been time for a
marriage which would have legitimated our child.'

"It was only on her child's account that she wished for the
solemnization of the ties that bound us, nor would she have sought for

this if she had not felt that death was at hand to unloose them. But
it was too late; even then she had only a few hours to live. By her

bedside, where I learned to know the worth of a devoted heart, my
nature underwent a final change. I was still at an age when tears are

shed. During those last days, while the precious life yet lingered, my
tears, my words, and everything I did bore witness to my heartstricken

repentance. The meanness and pettiness of the society in which I had
moved, the emptiness and selfishness of women of fashion, had taught

me to wish for and to seek an elect soul, and now I had found it--too
late. I was weary of lying words and of masked faces; counterfeit

passion had set me dreaming; I had called on love; and now I beheld
love lying before me, slain by my own hands, and had no power to keep

it beside me, no power to keep what was so wholly mine.
"The experience of four years had taught me to know my own real

character. My temperament, the nature of my imagination, my religious
principles, which had not been eradicated, but had rather lain

dormant; my turn of mind, my heart that only now began to make itself
felt--everything within me led me to resolve to fill my life with the

pleasures of affection, to replace a lawless love by family happiness
--the truest happiness on earth. Visions of close and dear

companionship appealed to me but the more strongly for my wanderings
in the wilderness, my grasping at pleasures unennobled by thought or

feeling. So though the revolution within me was rapidly effected, it
was permanent. With my southern temperament, warped by the life I led

in Paris, I should certainly have come to look without pity on an
unhappy girl betrayed by her lover; I should have laughed at the story

if it had been told me by some wag in merry company (for with us in
France a clever bon mot dispels all feelings of horror at a crime),

but all sophistries were silenced in the presence of this angelic
creature, against whom I could bring no least word of reproach. There

stood her coffin, and my child, who did not know that I had murdered
his mother, and smiled at me.

"She died. She died happy when she saw that I loved her, and that this
new love was due neither to pity nor to the ties that bound us

together. Never shall I forget her last hours. Love had been won back,
her mind was at rest about her child, and happiness triumphed over

suffering. The comfort and luxury about her, the merriment of her
child, who looked prettier still in the dainty garb that had replaced

his baby-clothes, were pledges of a happy future for the little one,
in whom she saw her own life renewed.

"The curate of Saint Sulpice witnessed my terrible distress. His words
well-nigh made me despair. He did not attempt to offer conventional

consolation, and put the gravity of my responsibilities unsparingly
before me, but I had no need of a spur. The conscience within me spoke