—My friend, the wisest amongst us is much happier not having encountered any woman, beautiful or ugly, clever or foolish, that would drive him mad enough for the Petites-Maisons. We men complain a great deal, we criticize them occasionally. We watch the years go by like so many moments, carried off by the evil that shadows us; and we only think to cower at the strength of certain natural attractions, especially those of us with sensitive souls or ardent imaginations. The spark that alights by chance on a powder keg does not produce so terrible an effect. The finger ready to light the fatal spark over you or me is perhaps raised.
M. d´Hérouville, wanting to speed up his project, greatly overworked his colleagues. Gardeil´s health suffered for it. To lighten his load Mademoiselle de La Chaux learned Hebrew, and while her lover rested she spent a portion of the night translating and transcribing bits of Hebrew. It came time to tackle the Greek authors; Mademoiselle de La Chaux rushed to perfect her then superficial knowledge of this language: while Gardeil slept she was busy translating and copying passages of Xenophon and Thucydides. She added Italian and English to her knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. Her English was so good that she could translate Hume´s first essays on metaphysics into French, a work whose difficult subject matter added infinitely to the difficulty of the idiom. When study exhausted her resources she amused herself by writing music. When she feared her lover might be overcome with ennui she sang. I am not exaggerating anything, as can be attested to by M. Le Camus, doctor of medicine, who consoled her when she was troubled and cared for her when she was in need, who remained by her side in the attic that her poverty had relegated her to, and who closed her eyes when she died. But I am forgetting one of her first misfortunes: the persecution that she had to suffer at the hands of a family outraged by the scandalous and public relationship. Both truth and lies were employed to dispose of her liberty in a humiliating manner. Priests and her parents pursued her from quarter to quarter, from house to house, for many years reducing her to a solitary and hidden life. She spent her days working for Gardeil. We visited her at night, and in the presence of her lover all her grief, all her worries vanished. —My word! Young, timorous, tenderhearted in the face of so many difficulties. What a happy being.
—Happy? Yes, she only ceased to be so when Gardeil was revoltingly ungrateful.
—But it is not possible for ingratitude to be the reward for so many exceptional qualities, so many signs of affection, so many sacrifices of every kind!
—You are mistaken, Gardeil was ungrateful. One day, Mademoiselle de La Chaux found herself alone in the world, without honor, without support. I assure you, I stayed with her for some time. Doctor Le Camus stayed with her always.
—Men!
—Who are you talking about?
—Gardeil.
—You see the villain and you do not see the good man right beside him. That painful and hopeless day she rushed to my quarters. It was morning. She was pale as death. Though she had only discovered her predicament the day before she looked like one who had been suffering for a long time. She was not crying, but one could see that she had cried a lot. She threw herself into an armchair, she did not speak, she could not speak, she held out her arms to me as she cried out. `What is it?´ I asked her. `Has he died?…´ `It is worse: he no longer loves me; he is leaving me…´
—Go on then.