We went out for a walk.
"That dress is pretty," I said, "such and such a girl, belonging to one
of my friends, has one like it."
We were seated at table.
"Come, my dear, my former mistress used to sing for me at dessert; it is
understood that you are to imitate her."
She sat at the piano.
"Ah! pardon me, but will you play that waltz that was so popular last
winter; that will remind me of happy times."
Reader, that lasted six months: for six long months, Brigitte,
scandalized, exposed to the insults of the world, had to endure from me
all the wrongs that a wrathful and cruel libertine could inflict on
woman.
Coming from these frightful scenes, in which my own spirit exhausted
itself in suffering and painful contemplation of the past; recovering
from that frenzy, a strange access of love, an extreme exaltation, led me
to treat my mistress like an idol, like a divinity. A quarter of an hour
after having insulted her, I was on my knees before her; when I was not
accusing her of some crime, I was begging her pardon; when I was not
mocking, I was weeping. Then I was seized by a delirium of joy, I almost
lost my reason in the violence of my transports; I did not know what to
do, what to say, what to think, in order to repair the evil I had done. I
took Brigitte in my arms, and made her repeat a hundred times that she
loved me, and that she pardoned me. I threatened to expiate my evil deeds
by blowing out my brains, if I ever ill-treated her again.
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