"Come," said he, "let's begin."

He wrote-"Courage, Emma! courage! I would not bring misery into your life."

"After all, that's true," thought Rodolphe. "I am acting in her

interest; I am honest."

"Have you carefully weighed your resolution? Do you know to what an

abyss I was dragging you, poor angel? No, you do not, do you? You were

coming confident and fearless, believing in happiness in the future. Ah!

unhappy that we are--insensate!"

Rodolphe stopped here to think of some good excuse.

"If I told her all my fortune is lost? No! Besides, that would stop

nothing. It would all have to be begun over again later on. As if one

could make women like that listen to reason!" He reflected, then went

on-"I shall not forget you, oh believe it; and I shall ever have a profound

devotion for you; but some day, sooner or later, this ardour (such is

the fate of human things) would have grown less, no doubt. Lassitude

would have come to us, and who knows if I should not even have had the

atrocious pain of witnessing your remorse, of sharing it myself, since

I should have been its cause? The mere idea of the grief that would come

to you tortures me, Emma. Forget me! Why did I ever know you? Why were

you so beautiful? Is it my fault? O my God! No, no! Accuse only fate."

"That's a word that always tells," he said to himself.

"Ah, if you had been one of those frivolous women that one sees,

certainly I might, through egotism, have tried an experiment, in that

case without danger for you. But that delicious exaltation, at once your

charm and your torment, has prevented you from understanding, adorable

woman that you are, the falseness of our future position. Nor had I

reflected upon this at first, and I rested in the shade of that ideal

happiness as beneath that of the manchineel tree, without foreseeing the

consequences."

"Perhaps she'll think I'm giving it up from avarice. Ah, well! so much

the worse; it must be stopped!"

"The world is cruel, Emma. Wherever we might have gone, it would have

persecuted us. You would have had to put up with indiscreet questions,

calumny, contempt, insult perhaps. Insult to you! Oh! And I, who would

place you on a throne! I who bear with me your memory as a talisman! For

I am going to punish myself by exile for all the ill I have done you.

I am going away. Whither I know not. I am mad. Adieu! Be good always.

Preserve the memory of the unfortunate who has lost you. Teach my name

to your child; let her repeat it in her prayers."




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