“I have had to do, up to this time, with women who deceived me, or who were unworthy of love.  I have led the life of a libertine; I bear on my heart certain marks that will never be effaced.  Is it my fault if calumny, and base suggestion, to-day planted in a heart whose fibres were still trembling with pain and ready to assimilate all that resembles sorrow, have driven me to despair?  I have just heard the name of a man I have never met, of whose existence I was ignorant; I have been given to understand that there has been between you and him a certain intimacy, which proves nothing.  I do not intend to question you; I have suffered from it, I have confessed to you, and I have done you an irreparable wrong.  But rather than consent to what you propose, I will throw it all in the fire.  Ah! my friend, do not degrade me; do not attempt to justify yourself, do not punish me for suffering.  How could I, in the bottom of my heart, suspect you of deceiving me?  No, you are beautiful and you are true; a single glance of yours, Brigitte, tells me more than words could utter and I am content.  If you knew what horrors, what monstrous deceit, the man who stands before you has seen!  If you knew how he has been treated, how they have mocked at all that is good, how they have taken pains to teach him all that leads to doubt, to jealousy, to despair!

“Alas! alas! my dear mistress, if you knew whom you love!  Do not reproach me, but rather pity me; I must forget that other beings than you exist.  Who can know through what frightful trials, through what pitiless suffering I have passed!  I did not expect this, I did not anticipate this moment.  Since you have become mine, I realize what I have done; I have felt, in kissing you, that my lips were not, like yours, unsullied.  In the name of heaven, help me live!  God made me a better man than the one you see before you.”

Brigitte held out her hands and caressed me tenderly.  She begged me to tell her all that had led to this sad scene.  I spoke of what I had learned from Larive, but did not dare confess that I had interviewed Mercanson.  She insisted that I listen to her explanation.  M. de Dalens had loved her; but he was a man of frivolous disposition, dissipated and inconstant; she had given him to understand that, not wishing to remarry, she could only request that he drop the role of suitor, and he had yielded to her wishes with good grace; but his visits had become more rare since that time, until now they had ceased altogether.  She drew from the bundle a certain letter which she showed me, the date of which was recent; I could not help blushing as I found in it the confirmation of all she had said; she assured me that she pardoned me, and exacted a promise that in the future I would promptly tell her of any cause I might have to suspect her.  Our treaty was sealed with a kiss, and when I left her we had both forgotten that M. de Dalens ever existed.

CHAPTER II