"O my mother!" I cried out, falling senseless to the ground.
On regaining consciousness, I saw Marie at my pillow.
"O die with me," I said. "Let us be with my mother."
When I was strong enough to leave my bed, I noticed that Marie, under numerous pretexts, absented herself from me. Our rambles ceased and she was often with Montmorin. This at first enraptured her lover but he soon discovered that she was preoccupied and sad, while I, jealous and melancholy, walked alone in the woods. I wandered near the margins of pestilential lakes, in the hope that, being overcome by malaria, Marie would again sit by my bed.
Montmorin's generous heart divined the cause of my sadness and of Marie's enforced fidelity to him. He said:
"Marie, our first duty is to make Augustus" (for so he called me) "happy. I shall go to France in his interests."
And he left us. Consider Montmorin's action, Thérèse, and realize to what a generous and absurd height a loyal soul is raised by the principle symbolized in royalty. Montmorin renounced his plighted wife as later on he renounced his life in devotion to the PRINCIPLE. And Marie, beholding in me not a hapless castaway but the incarnation of the PRINCIPLE, erected like a second Lavallière an altar whereon she radiantly idealized me, after having vainly sought to idealize her betrothed.
On the day after Montmorin's departure, we walked through the fields scarcely touching the ground. Reaching the border of the pestilential lake, we seated ourselves near the verdant fringe of delicate flowers. My head rested on her breast and our eyes promised what our lips could not utter, for very happiness.
On returning home, Marie complained of feeling cold. The next day she lay shivering in bed. The malaria was having its effect. Her clear eyes grew clouded and after some days her dear form became emaciated. Montmorin was summoned, but she could scarcely greet him. The bells from the Capuchin convent near by were pealing out into the air and we knelt by her bed as she said:
"Eugene, brother of my soul, forgive me."