You thought you were entering upon
a new life and that with me, you would forget the women who had deceived
you. Alas! Octave, I used to smile at that precocious experience which
you said you had been through, and of which I heard you boast like a
child who knows nothing of life. I thought I had but to will it, and all
that there was that was good in your heart would come to your lips with
my first kiss. You, too, believed it, but we were both mistaken. O my
child! You have, in your heart, a plague that can not be cured; that
woman who deceived you, how you must have loved her! Yes, more than you
love me, alas! much more, since with all my poor love I can not efface
her image; she must have deceived you most cruelly since it is in vain
that I am faithful! And the others, those wretches who then poisoned your
youth! The pleasures they sold must have been terrible since you ask me
to imitate them! You remember them with me! Alas! my dear child, that is
too cruel. I like you better when you are unjust and furious, when you
reproach me for imaginary crimes and avenge on me the wrong done you by
others, than when you are under the influence of that frightful gaiety,
when you assume that air of hideous mockery, when that mask of scorn
affronts my eyes. Tell me, Octave, why that? Why those moments when you
speak of love with contempt and rail at the most sacred mysteries of
love? What frightful power over your irritable nerves has that life you
have led, that such insults mount to your lips in spite of you? Yes, in
spite of you, for your heart is noble, you blush at your own blasphemy;
you love me too much not to suffer when you see me suffer.
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