“What will you say to the living God, when your work is finished?  What will become of the woman who loves you?  Where will you fall while she leans on you for support?  With what face will you one day bury your pale and wretched creature, just as she buried the last man who protected her?  Yes, yes, you will doubtless have to bury her, for your love kills and consumes; you have devoted her to the Furies and it is she who appeases them.  If you follow that woman you will be the cause of her death.  Take care! her guardian angel hesitates; he has just knocked at the door of this house, in order to frighten away a fatal and shameful passion!  He inspired Brigitte with the idea of flight; at this moment he may be whispering in her ear his final warning.  O assassin!  O murderer!  Beware! it is a matter of life and death.”

Thus I communed with myself; then on the sofa I caught sight of a little gingham dress, folded and ready to be packed in the trunk.  It had been a witness of our happy days.  I took it up and examined it.

“Must I leave you?” I said to it; “Must I lose you?  O little dress, would you go away without me?”

No, I can not abandon Brigitte; in these circumstances it would be cowardly.  She has just lost her aunt, and is all alone; she is exposed to the power of I know not what enemy.  Can it be Mercanson?  He may have spoken of my conversation with him, and, seeing that I was jealous of Dalens, may have guessed the rest.  Assuredly he is the snake who has been hissing about my well-beloved flower.  I must punish him, and I must repair the wrong I have done Brigitte.  Fool that I am!  I think of leaving her, when I ought to consecrate my life to her, to the expiation of my sins, to rendering her happy after the tears I have drawn from her eyes-when I am her only support in the world, her only friend, her only protector! when I ought to follow her to the end of the world, to shelter her with my body, to console her for having loved me, for having given herself to me!

“Brigitte!” I cried, returning to her room, “wait an hour for me, and I will return.”

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Wait for me,” I replied, “do not set out without me.  Remember the words of Ruth:  ’Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried."’

I left her precipitately, and rushed out to find Mercanson.  I was told that he had gone out, and I entered his house to wait for him.

I sat in the corner of the room on a priest’s chair before a dirty black table.  I was becoming impatient when I recalled my duel on account of my first mistress.

“I received a wound from a bullet and am still a fool,” I said to myself.  “What have I come to do here?  This priest will not fight; if I seek a quarrel with him, he will say that his priestly robes forbid, and he will continue his vile gossip when I have gone.  Moreover, for what can I hold him responsible?  What is it that has disturbed Brigitte?  They say that her reputation has been sullied, that I ill-treat her, and that she ought not to submit to it.  What stupidity!  That concerns no one; there is nothing to do but allow them to talk; in such a case, to notice an insult is to give it importance.