Of all the sisters of love, the most beautiful is pity.  I held Madame Levasseur’s hand as she began to speak of my mistress, saying all she could think of in her favor.  My sadness increased.  What could I reply?  Finally she came to speak of herself.

Not long since, she said, a man who loved her abandoned her.  She had made great sacrifices for him; her fortune was compromised, as well as her honor and her name.  Her husband, whom she knew to be vindictive, had made threats.  Her tears flowed as she continued, and I began to forget my own sorrow in my sympathy for her.  She had been married against her will; she struggled a long time; but she regretted nothing except that she had not been able to inspire a more sincere affection.  I believe she even accused herself because she had not been able to hold her lover’s heart, and because she had been guilty of apparent indifference.

When she had unburdened her heart she became silent.

“Madame,” I said, “it was not chance that brought about our meeting in the Bois de Boulogne.  I believe that human sorrows are but wandering sisters and that some good angel unites the trembling hands that are stretched out for aid.  Do not repent having told me your sorrow.  The secret you have confided to me is only a tear which has fallen from your eye, but has rested on my heart.  Permit me to come again and let us suffer together.”

Such lively sympathy took possession of me that without reflection I kissed her; it did not occur to my mind that it could offend her, and she did not appear even to notice it.

Our conversation continued in this tone of expansive friendship.  She told me her sorrows, I told her mine, and between these two experiences which touched each other, I felt arise a sweetness, a celestial accord born of two voices in anguish.  All this time I had seen nothing but her face.  Suddenly I noticed that her dress was in disorder.  It appeared singular to me that, seeing my embarrassment, she did not rearrange it, and I turned my head to give her an opportunity.  She did nothing.  Finally, meeting her eyes and seeing that she was perfectly aware of the state she was in, I felt as if I had been struck by a thunderbolt, for I now clearly understood that I was the plaything of her monstrous effrontery, that grief itself was for her but a means of seducing the senses.  I took my hat without a word, bowed profoundly, and left the room.

CHAPTER VII

THE WISDOM OF SIRACH

Upon returning to my apartments I found a large box in the centre of the room.  One of my aunts had died, and I was one of the heirs to her fortune, which was not large.

The box contained, among other things, a number of musty old books.  Not knowing what to do, and being afflicted with ennui, I began to read one of them.  They were for the most part romances of the time of Louis XV; my pious aunt had probably inherited them herself and never read them, for they were, so to speak, catechisms of vice.