I was lying on the sofa; I felt, at every word she spoke, a bad hour of my past life slipping away from me.  I watched the star of love rising in my sky, and it seemed to me I was like a tree filled with sap that shakes off its dry leaves in order to attire itself in new foliage.  She sat down at the piano and told me she was going to play an air by Stradella.  More than all else I love sacred music, and that morceau which she had sung for me a number of times gave me great pleasure.

“Yes,” she said when she had finished, “but you are very much mistaken, the air is mine, and I have made you believe it was Stradella’s.”

“It is yours?”

“Yes, and I told you it was by Stradella in order to see what you would say of it.  I never play my own music when I happen to compose any; but I wanted to try it with you, and you see it has succeeded since you were deceived.”

What a monstrous machine is man!  What could be more innocent?  A bright child might have adopted that ruse to surprise his teacher.  She laughed heartily the while, but I felt a strange coldness as if a dark cloud had settled on me; my countenance changed: 

“What is the matter?” she asked.  “Are you ill?”

“It is nothing; play that air again.”

While she was playing I walked up and down the room; I passed my hand over my forehead as if to brush away the fog; I stamped my foot, shrugged my shoulders at my own madness; finally I sat down on a cushion which had fallen to the floor; she came to me.  The more I struggled with the spirit of darkness which had seized me, the thicker the night that gathered around my head.

“Verily,” I said, “you lie so well?  What! that air is yours?  Is it possible you can lie so fluently?”

She looked at me with an air of astonishment.

“What is it?” she asked.

Unspeakable anxiety was depicted on her face.  Surely she could not believe me fool enough to reproach her for such a harmless bit of pleasantry; she did not see anything serious in that sadness which I felt; but the more trifling the cause, the greater the surprise.  At first she thought I, too, must be joking; but when she saw me growing paler every moment as if about to faint, she stood with open lips and bent body, looking like a statue.

“God of Heaven!” she cried, “is it possible?”

You smile, perhaps, reader, at this page; I who write it still shudder as I think of it.  Misfortunes have their symptoms as well as diseases, and there is nothing so terrible at sea as a little black point on the horizon.

However, my dear Brigitte drew a little round table into the centre of the room and brought out some supper.  She had prepared it herself, and I did not drink a drop that was not first borne to her lips.  The blue light of day, piercing through the curtains, illumined her charming face and tender eyes; she was tired and allowed her head to fall on my shoulder with a thousand terms of endearment.