“My friend,” said Desgenais, “do not take the thing so seriously.  The solitary life you have been leading for the last two months has made you ill; I see you have need of distraction.  Come to supper with me this evening, and tomorrow morning we will go to the country.”

The tone in which he said this hurt me more than anything else; in vain I tried to control myself.  “Yes,” I thought, “deceived by that woman, poisoned by horrible suggestions, having no refuge either in work or in fatigue, having for my only safeguard against despair and ruin a sacred but frightful grief.  O God! it is that grief, that sacred relic of my sorrow, that has just crumbled in my hands!  It is no longer, my love, it is my despair that is insulted.  Mockery!  She mocks at me as I weep!” That appeared incredible to me.  All the memories of the past crowded about my heart when I thought of it.  I seemed to see the spectres of our nights of love; they hung over a bottomless, eternal abyss, black as chaos, and from the bottom of that abyss arose a shriek of laughter, sweet but mocking, that said:  “Behold your reward!”

Had I been told that the world mocked at me I would have replied:  “So much the worse for it,” and I should not have been angry; but at the same time I was told that my mistress was a shameless wretch.  Thus, on one side, the ridicule was public, vouched for, stated by two witnesses who, before telling what they knew, must have felt that the world was against me; and, on the other hand, what reply could I make?  How could I escape?  What could I do when the centre of my life, my heart itself, was ruined, killed, annihilated.  What could I say when the woman for whom I had braved all, ridicule as well as blame, for whom I had borne a load of misery, whom I loved, and who loved another, of whom I demanded no love, of whom I desired nothing but permission to weep at her door, no favor but that of vowing my youth to her memory and of writing her name, her name alone, on the tomb of my hopes!—­Ah! when I thought of it, I felt the hand of death heavy upon me.  That woman mocked me, it was she who first pointed her finger at me, singling me out to the idle crowd which surrounded her; it was she, it was those lips erstwhile so many times pressed to mine, it was that body, that soul of my life, my flesh and my blood, it was from that source the injury came; yea, the last pang of all, the most cowardly and the most bitter, the pitiless laugh that sneers in the face of grief.

The more I thought of it the more enraged I became.  Did I say enraged?  I do not know what passion possessed me.  What I do know is that an inordinate desire for vengeance entered into my soul.  How could I revenge myself on a woman?  I would have paid any price for a weapon that could be used against her.  But I had none, not even the one she had employed; I could not pay her in her own coin.

Suddenly I noticed a shadow moving behind the curtain before the closet.  I had forgotten my prisoner.