“Let those who have loved you in your youth weep for you!  They are not many.  If you would live, you must not only forget love, but you must deny that it exists; not only deny what there has been of good in you, but kill all that may be good in the future; for what will you do if you remember?  Life for you would be one ceaseless regret.  No, no, you must choose between your soul and your body; you must kill one or the other.  The memory of the good drives you to the evil, make a corpse of yourself unless you wish to become your own spectre.  O child, child! die while you can!  May tears be shed over your grave!”

I threw myself on the foot of the bed in such a frightful state of despair that my reason fled and I no longer knew where I was or what I was doing.  Brigitte sighed.

My senses stirred within me.  Was it grief or despair?  I do not know.  Suddenly a horrible idea occurred to me.

“What!” I muttered, “leave that for another!  Die, descend into the ground, while that bosom heaves with the air of heaven?  Just God! another hand than mine on that fine, transparent skin!  Another mouth on those lips, another love in that heart!  Brigitte happy, loving, adored, and I in a corner of the cemetery, crumbling into dust in a ditch!  How long will it take her to forget me if I cease to exist to-morrow?  How many tears will she shed?  None, perhaps!  Not a friend who speaks to her but will say that my death was a good thing, who will not hasten to console her, who will not urge her to forget me!  If she weeps, they will seek to distract her attention from her loss; if memory haunts her, they will take her away; if her love for me survives me, they will seek to cure her as if she had been poisoned; and she herself, who will perhaps at first say that she desires to follow me, will a month later turn aside to avoid the weeping-willow planted over my grave!

“How could it be otherwise?  Who, as beautiful as she, wastes life in idle regrets?  If she should think of dying of grief, that beautiful bosom would urge her to live, and her mirror would persuade her; and the day when her exhausted tears give place to the first smile, who will not congratulate her on her recovery?  When, after eight days of silence, she consents to hear my name pronounced in her presence, then she will speak of it herself as if to say:  ‘Console me;’ then little by little she will no longer refuse to think of the past but will speak of it, and she will open her window some beautiful spring morning when the birds are singing in the garden; she will become pensive and say:  ‘I have loved!’ Who will be there at her side?  Who will dare to tell her that she must continue to love?