I had promised to escort my mistress to her home that night.  She was a widow and therefore free, living alone with an old relative who served as chaperon.  As I was crossing the hall she called to me: 

“Come, Octave!” she said, “let us go; here I am.”

I laughed, and passed out without replying.  After walking a short distance I sat down on a stone projecting from a wall.  I do not know what my thoughts were; I sat as if stupefied by the unfaithfulness of one of whom I had never been jealous, whom I had never had cause to suspect.  What I had seen left no room for doubt; I was felled as if by a stroke from a club.  The only thing I remember doing as I sat there, was looking mechanically up at the sky, and, seeing a star shoot across the heavens, I saluted that fugitive gleam, in which poets see a worn-out world, and gravely took off my hat to it.

I returned to my home very quietly, experiencing nothing, as if deprived of all sensation and reflection.  I undressed and retired; hardly had my head touched the pillow when the spirit of vengeance seized me with such force that I suddenly sat bolt upright against the wall as if all my muscles were made of wood.  I then jumped from my bed with a cry of pain; I could walk only on my heels, the nerves in my toes were so irritated.  I passed an hour in this way, completely beside myself, and stiff as a skeleton.  It was the first burst of passion I had ever experienced.

The man I had surprised with my mistress was one of my most intimate friends.  I went to his house the next day, in company with a young lawyer named Desgenais; we took pistols, another witness, and repaired to the woods of Vincennes.  On the way I avoided speaking to my adversary or even approaching him; thus I resisted the temptation to insult or strike him, a useless form of violence at a time when the law recognized the code.  But I could not remove my eyes from him.  He was the companion of my childhood, and we had lived in the closest intimacy for many years.  He understood perfectly my love for my mistress, and had several times intimated that bonds of this kind were sacred to a friend, and that he would be incapable of an attempt to supplant me, even if he loved the same woman.  In short, I had perfect confidence in him and I had perhaps never pressed the hand of any human creature more cordially than his.

Eagerly and curiously I scrutinized this man whom I had heard speak of love like an antique hero and whom yet I had caught caressing my mistress.  It was the first time in my life I had seen a monster; I measured him with a haggard eye to see what manner of man was this.  He whom I had known since he was ten years old, with whom I had lived in the most perfect friendship, it seemed to me I had never seen him.  Allow me a comparison.

There is a Spanish play, familiar to all the world, in which a stone statue comes to sup with a profligate, sent thither by divine justice.  The profligate puts a good face on the matter and forces himself to affect indifference; but the statue asks for his hand, and when he has extended it he feels himself seized by a mortal chill and falls in convulsions.