Brigitte's glance when I adopted this tone I shall never forget; I shuddered at it myself. "But, bah!" I thought, "she would do the same thing that my other mistress did—she would point me out as a ridiculous fool, and I should pay for it all in the eyes of the public."
Between the man who doubts and the man who denies there is only a step. All philosophy is akin to atheism. Having told Brigitte that I suspected her past conduct, I began to regard it with real suspicion.
I came to imagine that Brigitte was deceiving me, she who never left me at any hour of the day; I sometimes planned long absences in order to test her, as I supposed; but in truth it was only to give myself some excuse for suspicion and mockery. And then I took pleasure in observing that I had outgrown my foolish jealousy, which was the same as saying that I no longer esteemed her highly enough to be jealous of her.
At first I kept such thoughts to myself, but soon found pleasure in revealing them to Brigitte. We had gone 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 now seated at table.
"Come, my dear, my former mistress used to sing for me at dessert; you promised, you know, to imitate her."
She sat down 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, this 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 can inflict on woman.