“—­and therefore when I returned home and thought them over, they never misled me.  I only marvelled at a cleverness so in harmony with your character and your countenance.  Do not be uneasy, I never doubted that your assumed duplicity covered an angelic candor.  No, your mind, your education, have in no way lessened the precious innocence which we demand in a wife.  You are indeed a wife for a poet, a diplomatist, a thinker, a man destined to endure the chances and changes of life; and my admiration is equalled only by the attachment I feel to you.  I now entreat you—­if yesterday you were not playing a little comedy when you accepted the love of a man whose vanity will change to pride if you accept him, one whose defects will become virtues under your divine influence—­I entreat you do not excite a passion which, in him, amounts to vice.  Jealousy is a noxious element in my soul, and you have revealed to me its strength; it is awful, it destroys everything —­Oh!  I do not mean the jealousy of an Othello,” he continued, noticing Modeste’s gesture.  “No, no; my thoughts were of myself:  I have been so indulged on that point.  You know the affection to which I owe all the happiness I have ever enjoyed,—­very little at the best” (he sadly shook his head).  “Love is symbolized among all nations as a child, because it fancies the world belongs to it, and it cannot conceive otherwise.  Well, Nature herself set the limit to that sentiment.  It was still-born.  A tender, maternal soul guessed and calmed the painful constriction of my heart,—­for a woman who feels, who knows, that she is past the joys of love becomes angelic in her treatment of others.  The duchess has never made me suffer in my sensibilities.  For ten years not a word, not a look, that could wound me!  I attach more value to words, to thoughts, to looks, than ordinary men.  If a look is to me a treasure beyond all price, the slightest doubt is deadly poison; it acts instantaneously, my love dies.  I believe—­contrary to the mass of men, who delight in trembling, hoping, expecting—­that love can only exist in perfect, infantile, and infinite security.  The exquisite purgatory, where women delight to send us by their coquetry, is a base happiness to which I will not submit:  to me, love is either heaven or hell.  If it is hell, I will have none of it.  I feel an affinity with the azure skies of Paradise within my soul.  I can give myself without reserve, without secrets, doubts or deceptions, in the life to come; and I demand reciprocity.  Perhaps I offend you by these doubts.  Remember, however, that I am only talking of myself—­”

“—­a good deal, but never too much,” said Modeste, offended in every hole and corner of her pride by this discourse, in which the Duchesse de Chaulieu served as a dagger.  “I am so accustomed to admire you, my dear poet.”

“Well, then, can you promise me the same canine fidelity which I offer to you?  Is it not beautiful?  Is it not just what you have longed for?”