When I reached home I began to cry like a child. There is no man to whom
a woman has not been unfaithful, once at least, and who will not know
what I suffered.
I said to myself, under the weight of these feverish resolutions which
one always feels as if one had the force to carry out, that I must break
with my amour at once, and I waited impatiently for daylight in order
to set out forthwith to rejoin my father and my sister, of whose love at
least I was certain, and certain that that love would never be betrayed.
However, I did not wish to go away without letting Marguerite know why
I went. Only a man who really cares no more for his mistress leaves her
without writing to her. I made and remade twenty letters in my head. I
had had to do with a woman like all other women of the kind. I had been
poetizing too much. She had treated me like a school-boy, she had used
in deceiving me a trick which was insultingly simple. My self-esteem
got the upper hand. I must leave this woman without giving her the
satisfaction of knowing that she had made me suffer, and this is what I
wrote to her in my most elegant handwriting and with tears of rage and
sorrow in my eyes: "MY DEAR MARGUERITE: I hope that your indisposition yesterday was not
serious. I came, at eleven at night, to ask after you, and was told
that you had not come in. M. de G. was more fortunate, for he presented
himself shortly afterward, and at four in the morning he had not left.
"Forgive me for the few tedious hours that I have given you, and be
assured that I shall never forget the happy moments which I owe to you.
"I should have called to-day to ask after you, but I intend going back
to my father's.
"Good-bye, my dear Marguerite. I am not rich enough to love you as I
would nor poor enough to love you as you would. Let us then forget, you
a name which must be indifferent enough to you, I a happiness which has
become impossible.
"I send back your key, which I have never used, and which might be
useful to you, if you are often ill as you were yesterday."
As you will see, I was unable to end my letter without a touch of
impertinent irony, which proved how much in love I still was.
I read and reread this letter ten times over; then the thought of the
pain it would give to Marguerite calmed me a little. I tried to persuade
myself of the feelings which it professed; and when my servant came to
my room at eight o'clock, I gave it to him and told him to take it at
once.