"It was! But you are stronger than I am.... I throw down my arms...."
On my writing-table lay a spray of red roses.
"You do love me a little?"
She was covered with confusion like a young girl—she blushed ... it was all over with me, my honour, my efforts to break the chains which bound me, and which I longed for when I was free.
Six months went by; we lived in a wonderful dream: we chirruped like starlings, we kissed, our love was endless. We played duets and backgammon. The most beautiful days of the last five years were surpassed. Spring had returned in the autumn of our lives! And had we not dreaded the approach of the winter?
I was fast again in her toils. She was convinced that the love philtre which she had given me to drink had intoxicated me afresh, and relapsed into her former indifference. She neglected her appearance, and despite all my remonstrances no longer took the trouble to make the best of herself. I foresaw that the result would be coldness on both sides, in spite of ourselves. Even her preference for her own sex reappeared, more dangerous and more pitiable, for this time she made love to young girls.
One evening we had invited the commandant and his fourteen-year-old daughter, cur hostess and her daughter, a girl of fifteen, and a third girl of about the same age to a quiet little dinner-party, which was to be followed by a dance.
Towards midnight—to this day I grow hot when I think of it—I saw that Marie, who had been drinking freely, had gathered the young girls round her and, looking at them with lascivious eyes, was kissing them on the lips.
The commandant was watching the scene from a dark corner of the room, hardly able to control himself. In imagination I saw prison, penal servitude, a scandal which we could never live down; I made a rush at the group and broke it up, telling the girls to join in the dancing....