I could not struggle against such charming abandon, and my heart expanded with joy; I believed I had rid myself of the bad dream that had just tormented me, and I begged her pardon for giving way to a sudden impulse which I myself did not understand.

“My friend,” I said, from the bottom of my heart, “I am very sorry that I unjustly reproached you for a piece of innocent badinage; but if you love me, never lie to me, even in the smallest matter, for a lie is an abomination to me and I can not endure it.”

I told her I would remain until she was asleep.  I saw her close her beautiful eyes and heard her murmur something in her sleep as I bent over and kissed her adieu.  Then I went away with a tranquil heart, promising myself that I would henceforth enjoy my happiness and allow nothing to disturb it.

But the next day Brigitte said to me, as if quite by chance: 

“I have a large book in which I have written my thoughts, everything that has occurred to my mind, and I want you to see what I said of you the first day I met you.”

We read together what concerned me, to which we added a hundred foolish comments, after which I began to turn the leaves in a mechanical way.  A phrase written in capital letters caught my eye on one of the pages I was turning; I distinctly saw some words that were insignificant enough, and I was about to read the rest when Brigitte stopped me and said: 

“Do not read that.”

I threw the book on the table.

“Why, certainly not,” I said, “I did not think what I was doing.”

“Do you still take things seriously?” she asked, smiling, doubtless seeing my malady coming on again; “take the book, I want you to read it.”

The book lay on the table within easy reach and I did not take my eyes from it.  I seemed to hear a voice whispering in my ear, and I thought I saw, grimacing before me, with his glacial smile and dry face, Desgenais.  “What are you doing here, Desgenais?” I asked as if I really saw him.  He looked as he did that evening, when he leaned over my table and unfolded to me his catechism of vice.

I kept my eyes on the book and I felt vaguely stirring in my memory some forgotten words of the past.  The spirit of doubt hanging over my head had injected into my veins a drop of poison; the vapor mounted to my head and I staggered like a drunken man.  What secret was Brigitte concealing from me?  I knew very well that I had only to bend over and open the book; but at what place?  How could I recognize the leaf on which my eye had chanced to fall?

My pride, moreover, would not permit me to take the book; was it indeed pride?  “O God!” I said to myself with a frightful sense of sadness, “is the past a spectre? and can it come out of its tomb?  Ah! wretch that I am, can I never love?”

All my ideas of contempt for women, all the phrases of mocking fatuity which I had repeated as a schoolboy his lesson, suddenly came to my mind; and strange to say, while formerly I did not believe in making a parade of them, now it seemed that they were real, or at least that they had been.