“Come,” said he, “let’s begin.”

He wrote—­

“Courage, Emma! courage!  I would not bring misery into your life.”

“After all, that’s true,” thought Rodolphe.  “I am acting in her interest; I am honest.”

“Have you carefully weighed your resolution?  Do you know to what an abyss I was dragging you, poor angel?  No, you do not, do you?  You were coming confident and fearless, believing in happiness in the future.  Ah! unhappy that we are—­insensate!”

Rodolphe stopped here to think of some good excuse.

“If I told her all my fortune is lost?  No!  Besides, that would stop nothing.  It would all have to be begun over again later on.  As if one could make women like that listen to reason!” He reflected, then went on—­

“I shall not forget you, oh believe it; and I shall ever have a profound devotion for you; but some day, sooner or later, this ardour (such is the fate of human things) would have grown less, no doubt.  Lassitude would have come to us, and who knows if I should not even have had the atrocious pain of witnessing your remorse, of sharing it myself, since I should have been its cause?  The mere idea of the grief that would come to you tortures me, Emma.  Forget me!  Why did I ever know you?  Why were you so beautiful?  Is it my fault?  O my God!  No, no!  Accuse only fate.”

“That’s a word that always tells,” he said to himself.

“Ah, if you had been one of those frivolous women that one sees, certainly I might, through egotism, have tried an experiment, in that case without danger for you.  But that delicious exaltation, at once your charm and your torment, has prevented you from understanding, adorable woman that you are, the falseness of our future position.  Nor had I reflected upon this at first, and I rested in the shade of that ideal happiness as beneath that of the manchineel tree, without foreseeing the consequences.”

“Perhaps she’ll think I’m giving it up from avarice.  Ah, well! so much the worse; it must be stopped!”

“The world is cruel, Emma.  Wherever we might have gone, it would have persecuted us.  You would have had to put up with indiscreet questions, calumny, contempt, insult perhaps.  Insult to you!  Oh!  And I, who would place you on a throne!  I who bear with me your memory as a talisman!  For I am going to punish myself by exile for all the ill I have done you.  I am going away.  Whither I know not.  I am mad.  Adieu!  Be good always.  Preserve the memory of the unfortunate who has lost you.  Teach my name to your child; let her repeat it in her prayers.”

The wicks of the candles flickered.  Rodolphe got up to, shut the window, and when he had sat down again—­

“I think it’s all right.  Ah! and this for fear she should come and hunt me up.”

“I shall be far away when you read these sad lines, for I have wished to flee as quickly as possible to shun the temptation of seeing you again.  No weakness!  I shall return, and perhaps later on we shall talk together very coldly of our old love.  Adieu!”