You think
that I have loved you for a month, when in fact I have loved you from the
first day I met you. When you discovered it, you did not refuse to see me
on that account. If you had at that time enough esteem for me to believe
me incapable of offending you, why have you lost that esteem? That is
what I have come to ask you. What have I done? I have bent my knee, but I
have not said a word. What have I told you? What you already knew. I have
been weak because I have suffered. It is true, madame, that I am twenty
years of age and what I have seen of life has only disgusted me, I could
use a stronger word; it is true that there is not at this hour on earth,
either in the society of men or in solitude, a place, however small and
insignificant, that I care to occupy. The space enclosed between the four
walls of your garden is the only spot in the world where I live; you are
the only human being who has made me love God. I had renounced everything
before I knew you; why deprive me of the only ray of light that
Providence has spared me? If it is on account of fear, what have I done
to inspire it? If it is on account of pity, in what respect am I
culpable? If it is on account of pity and because I suffer, you are
mistaken in supposing that I can cure myself; it might have been done,
perhaps, two months ago; but I preferred to see you and to suffer, and I
do not repent, whatever may come of it.
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