“We touch at many points,” I replied.  “Surely we belong to the small number of human beings born to the highest joys and the deepest sorrows; whose feeling qualities vibrate in unison and echo each other inwardly; whose sensitive natures are in harmony with the principle of things.  Put such beings among surroundings where all is discord and they suffer horribly, just as their happiness mounts to exaltation when they meet ideas, or feelings, or other beings who are congenial to them.  But there is still a third condition, where sorrows are known only to souls affected by the same distress; in this alone is the highest fraternal comprehension.  It may happen that such souls find no outlet either for good or evil.  Then the organ within us endowed with expression and motion is exercised in a void, expends its passion without an object, utters sounds without melody, and cries that are lost in solitude,—­terrible defeat of a soul which revolts against the inutility of nothingness.  These are struggles in which our strength oozes away without restraint, as blood from an inward wound.  The sensibilities flow to waste and the result is a horrible weakening of the soul; an indescribable melancholy for which the confessional itself has no ears.  Have I not expressed our mutual sufferings?”

She shuddered, and then without removing her eyes from the setting sun, she said, “How is it that, young as you are, you know these things?  Were you once a woman?”

“Ah!” I replied, “my childhood was like a long illness—­”

“I hear Madeleine coughing,” she cried, leaving me abruptly.

The countess showed no displeasure at my constant visits, and for two reasons.  In the first place she was pure as a child, and her thoughts wandered into no forbidden regions; in the next I amused the count and made a sop for that lion without claws or mane.  I found an excuse for my visits which seemed plausible to every one.  Monsieur de Mortsauf proposed to teach me backgammon, and I accepted; as I did so the countess was betrayed into a look of compassion, which seemed to say, “You are flinging yourself into the jaws of the lion.”  If I did not understand this at the time, three days had not passed before I knew what I had undertaken.  My patience, which nothing exhausts, the fruit of my miserable childhood, ripened under this last trial.  The count was delighted when he could jeer at me for not putting in practice the principles or the rules he had explained; if I reflected before I played he complained of my slowness; if I played fast he was angry because I hurried him; if I forgot to mark my points he declared, making his profit out of the mistake, that I was always too rapid.  It was like the tyranny of a schoolmaster, the despotism of the rod, of which I can really give you no idea unless I compare myself to Epictetus under the yoke of a malicious child.  When we played for money his winnings gave him the meanest and most abject delight.