"Is it
possible that that is all?" I asked in spite of myself. Then I returned
to the city, I saw a little girl take her mother's arm and I became like
a child.
Although I had followed my friends into all manner of dissipation, I had
no desire to resume my place in the world of society. The sight of women
caused me intolerable pain; I could not touch a woman's hand without
trembling. I had decided never to love again.
Nevertheless I returned from the ball one evening so sick at heart that I
feared that it was love. I happened to have beside me at supper the most
charming and the most distinguished woman whom it had ever been my good
fortune to meet. When I closed my eyes to sleep I saw her image before
me. I thought I was lost, and I at once resolved that I would avoid
meeting her again. A sort of fever seized me and I lay on my bed for
fifteen days, repeating over and over the lightest words I had exchanged
with her.
As there is no spot on earth where one is so well known by his neighbors
as at Paris, it was not long before people of my acquaintance who had
seen me with Desgenais began to accuse me of being a great libertine. In
that I admired the discernment of the world: in proportion as I had
passed for inexperienced and sensitive at the time of my rupture with my
mistress, I was now considered insensible and hardened. Some one had just
told me that it was clear I had never loved that woman, that I had
doubtless merely played at love, thereby paying me a compliment which I
really did not deserve; but the most of it was that I was so swollen with
vanity that I was charmed with that view.
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