A wave of painful emotion almost suffocated Juliette. She paused and looked at me with a dazed expression.
"Poor child!" I said, "God should have protected you."
"Oh!" she rejoined, contracting her ebon eyebrows, "I used two terrible words; may God forgive me! I have no hatred in my heart, and I do not accuse Leoni of being a villain; no, no, for I do not blush for having loved him. He is an unfortunate man whom we should pity. If you knew—— But I will tell you all."
"Go on with your story," I said to her; "Leoni is guilty enough; you have no intention of accusing him more than he deserves."
Juliette resumed her narrative.
It is a fact that he loved me, loved me for myself; the sequel proved that clearly enough. Do not shake your head, Bustamente. Leoni's is a powerful body, animated by a vast mind; all the virtues and all the vices, all the passions, holy and guilty alike, find a place in it at the same time. No one has ever chosen to judge him impartially; he was quite right in saying that I alone have known him and done him justice.
The language that he used to me was so novel to my ear that I was intoxicated by it. Perhaps my absolute ignorance up to that time of everything bordering on sentiment made that language seem more delicious and more extraordinary to me than it would have seemed to a more experienced girl. But I believe—and other women believed with me—that no man on earth ever felt and expressed love like Leoni. Superior to other men in evil and in good, he spoke another tongue, he had another expression, he had also another heart. I have heard an Italian woman say that a bouquet in Leoni's hand was more fragrant than in another man's, and it was so with everything. He gave lustre to the simplest things and rejuvenated the oldest. There was a prestige about him; I was neither able nor desirous to escape its influence. I began to love him with all my strength.
At this period I seemed to grow in my own eyes. Whether it was the work of God, of Leoni, or of love, a vigorous mind developed and took possession of my feeble body. Every day I felt a world of new thoughts come to life within me. A word from Leoni gave birth to more sentiments than all the frivolous talk I had heard all my life. He observed my progress and was elated and proud over it. He sought to hasten it and brought me books. My mother looked at the gilt covers, the vellum and the pictures. She hardly glanced at the titles of the works which were destined to play havoc with my head and my heart. They were beautiful and pure books, almost all stories of women written by women: Valérie, Eugène de Rothelin, Mademoiselle de Clermont, Delphine. These touching and impassioned narratives, these glimpses of what was to me an ideal world, elevated my mind, but they devoured it. I became romantic, the most deplorable character that a woman can have.
[VI]
Three months had sufficed to bring about this metamorphosis. I was on the eve of marrying Leoni. Of all the documents he had promised to furnish, his certificate of birth and his patents of nobility alone had come to hand. As for the proofs of his wealth, he had written for them to another lawyer, and they had not arrived. He manifested extreme irritation and regret at this delay, which caused a further postponement of our wedding. One morning he came to our house with an air of desperation. He showed us an unstamped letter, which he had just received, he said, by a special messenger. This letter informed him that his man of business was dead, and that his successor, having found his papers in great disorder, had a difficult task before him to arrange them, that he asked a further delay of one or two weeks before he could furnish his lordship with the documents he required. Leoni was frantic at this mischance; he would die of impatience and disappointment, he said, before the end of that frightful fortnight. He threw himself down in a chair and burst into tears.