O God! it is that grief, that sacred relic of my
sorrow that has just crumbled in my hands! It is no longer my love, it is
my despair that is insulted. Mockery! She mocks at me as I weep!" That
appeared incredible to me. All the memories of the past clustered about
my heart when I thought of it. I seemed to see, one after the other, the
specters of our nights of love; they hung over a bottomless eternal
abyss, black as chaos, and from the bottom of that abyss there burst
forth a shriek of laughter, sweet but mocking, that said: "Behold your
reward!"
If I had been told that the world mocked at me I would have replied: "So
much the worse for it," and I would not be angry; but at the same time I
was told that my mistress was a shameless wretch. Thus, on one side, the
ridicule was public, vouched for, stated by two witnesses who, before
telling what they knew, must have felt that the world was against me;
and, on the other hand, what reply could I make? How could I escape? What
could I do when the center of my life, my heart itself, was ruined,
killed, annihilated. What could I say when that woman for whom I had
braved all, ridicule as well as blame, for whom I had borne a mountain of
misery, when that woman whom I loved and who loved another, of whom I
demanded no love, of whom I desired nothing but permission to weep at her
door, no favor but that of vowing my youth to her memory and writing her
name, her name alone, on the tomb of my hopes! Ah! when I thought of it,
I felt the hand of death heavy upon me; that woman mocked me, it was she
who first pointed her finger at me, singling me out to the idle crowd
which surrounded her; it was she, it was those lips so many times pressed
to mine, it was that body, that soul of my life, my flesh and my blood,
it was from that source the injury came; yes, the last of all, the most
cowardly and the most bitter, the pitiless laugh that spits in the face
of grief.
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