Alas! pardon, oh, my father! Perhaps it was but a base and sordid instinct of my own which I mistook for your answer. Doubtless, ashamed to acknowledge my own baseness, I was willing to attribute to your influence the vile, infernal thought, this first horrible doubt which has come to trouble for ever the smiling and pure stream of my beliefs; pardon, father, pardon once more, if in that moment when, overcome with anguish, I asked you, "What reason can Hélène have for feigning love for me?" my brutal selfishness answered, "Your fortune, for Hélène is poor!"
Since that fatal day, constantly tormented by an incessant and absorbing idea, for ever tortured by doubt,—that two-bladed sword which wounds both him who wields it, and him against whom it is raised,—I have persistently sought, and, to my sorrow, generally believed myself to have discovered, the most infamous motives hidden under the most innocent appearances, the most odious projects under the most expansive and generous devotion. I have very often, alas! pitilessly killed with a word the tenderest and sweetest enthusiasms; but never, O God! never can I forget the grievous, heartrending shock with which scepticism tore out from my heart its sacred and primal faith.
From that instant, it was as though a funereal crêpe was banded over my eyes, disfiguring everything I looked at. Hélène's face, so candid and pure, now seemed filled with falseness and cupidity. The blackest plot was unfolded to my view: my aunt's carelessness was a base calculation; that letter, drawing her attention to the rumours in circulation, was a part of the scheme; then, with a cruel pride, I applauded myself for having been so clever as to discover and overturn this shameless compact into which they had all entered against me; they had taken me, then, for their dupe.
Then, by a swift and inexplicable reaction, all my love was turned to hatred and despite; the tenderest effusions appeared to me as disgraceful pretences. Oh, shame! Oh, grief! my execrable doubting went so far as to disbelieve in the childish affection that Hélène had demonstrated when in the convent; and in my secret heart I even dared to accuse Madame de Verteuil and her daughter with being the accomplices of Hélène and her mother, and to have invented that episode in order to blind me the more surely.
Certainly the supposition of so base a deception was odious and stupid; it was horrible and incredible to be thus possessed with doubt when barely twenty-three years old; when, in all my life so far, no bitter experiences, no past deceptions justified me in such scepticism!
Alas! it was a sorry benefit, for one cannot deny that, when clothed in such a cuirass of doubt, and armed with such wise distrust, one braves with impunity the falsehoods and deceits of the world. But, as the steel corselet, while protecting you from the enemy's sword, renders you insensible to the warmth of a friendly hand, so unbelief, that iron armour, so cold and polished, protects you from the deceitfulness of a scoundrel, but makes you, alas! impenetrable to the ineffable belief in pure affection.
Since now I can analyse and get to the root of the influences, instincts, or natural organisation, which were the causes of this sudden germination and development in my mind of the distrust henceforth to be the centre around which all my thoughts were to gravitate, no matter in how apparently indubitable a position I might be, I can remember my father telling me frequently: "I am glad to see that you distrust your own motives. When we can distrust ourselves, we can defy others, and in this there is great wisdom."
Then, by a singular contrast, my mother, blinded by maternal pride, which sublime egotism is to women what personality is to men, after vainly attempting to work me up to a fit of self-glorification, would say, sadly: "My poor, dear child, I am in despair when I see how little confidence you have in yourself; by dint of distrusting yourself, you will lose your belief in others, and that will be a terrible misfortune."
Now I am certain that my insurmountable self-distrust was one of the principal causes of my doubting others; having no faith in the opinions people professed to have of me, for they seemed false and exaggerated, I consequently was always on the watch for some interested or underhand reason for their admiration of me. What confirmed me in this opinion is, that I have never found more persistent, more imperturbable believers than among foolish and vain people. The want of intelligence of the fool prevents him from observing, reflecting, or comparing, while the conceited man's self-satisfaction never permits him to doubt as to the certain and prodigious effect he is sure of producing.
To return to my projects of a union with Hélène: from the day that doubt entered my mind, my plans were for ever changed.