Of all that I had heard I had clearly understood but one thing, which was the cause of my despair: it was that Leoni no longer loved me. Until then I had always refused to believe it, although his conduct should have made it clear to me. I resolved to contribute no farther to his ruin, and not to abuse a remnant of compassion and generosity which led him to continue to show me some consideration. I sent for him as soon as I felt strong enough to endure the interview, and told him what I had heard him say about me in the midst of the revel; I kept silence as to all the rest. I could not see clearly in that confused mass of infamous things which the remarks of his friends had caused me to suspect; I did not choose to understand them. Moreover, I was ready to consent to everything: to desertion, despair and death.
I told him that I had decided to go away in a week, and that I would accept nothing from him thenceforth. I had kept my father's pin; by selling it I could obtain much more than I needed to return to Brussels.
The courage with which I spoke, and which the fever doubtless assisted, dealt Leoni an unexpected blow. He said nothing, but paced the floor excitedly; then he began to sob and cry, and fell, gasping for breath, on a chair. Dismayed by his apparent condition, I left my reclining chair in spite of myself, and went to him with an air of solicitude. Thereupon he seized me in his arms and, pressing me frantically to his breast, cried:
"No, no! you shall not leave me; I will never consent to it; if your pride, perfectly just and legitimate as it is, will not let you yield, I will lie at your feet, across this doorway, and I will kill myself if you step over me. No, you shall not go, for I love you passionately; you are the only woman in the world whom I have ever been able to respect and admire after possessing her for six months. What I said was nonsense, and an infamous lie; you do not know, Juliette, oh! you do not know all my misfortunes! you do not know to what I am condemned by the society of a coterie of abandoned men, to what I am impelled by a soul of brass, fire, gold and mud, which I received from heaven and hell in concert! If you will not love me any longer, then I will live no longer. What have I not done, what have I not sacrificed, what faculties have I not debased, to retain my hold upon this execrable life, made execrable by them! What mocking demon is confined in my brain to make me still find attraction in this life at times, and shatter the most sacred ties to plunge into it still deeper? Ah! it is time to have done with it. Since I was born, I have known but one really beautiful, really pure time, and that was when I possessed and adored you. That purged me of all my wickedness, and I should have remained in the chalet under the snow; I should have died at peace with you, with God and with myself, whereas here I am ruined in your eyes and my own. Juliette, Juliette! mercy, pardon! I feel that my heart will break if you abandon me. I am young still; I want to live, to be happy, and I never shall be, except with you. Will you punish me with death for a blasphemous word that escaped my lips when I was intoxicated? Do you believe what I said? can you believe it? Oh! how I suffer! how I have suffered for a fortnight! I have secrets which burn my vitals; if only I could tell them to you!—but you would never be able to listen to the end."
"I know them," I cried; "and if you loved me, I would care nothing for all the rest."
"You know them!" he exclaimed with an air of bewilderment; "you know them? What do you know?"
"I know that you are ruined, that this palace is not yours, that you have squandered an enormous sum in three months; I know that you have become accustomed to this adventurous life and these dissipated habits. I do not know how you reconstruct your fortune so quickly or how you throw it away; I fancy that gambling is your ruin and your resource; I believe that you have about you a deplorable circle of friends, and that you are struggling against shockingly bad advice; I believe that you are on the brink of a precipice, but that you can still avoid it."
"Well, yes, that is all true," he cried; "you know everything! and you will forgive me?"
"If I had not lost your love," I replied, "I should not consider it a loss to leave this palace, this luxury and this society, all of which are hateful to me. However poor we may be, we can always live as we lived in our chalet—there, or somewhere else, if you are tired of Switzerland. If you still loved me, you would not be ruined; for you would think neither of gambling nor of intemperance, nor of any of the passions which you commemorated in an infernal toast; if you loved me, you would pay what you owe with what you have left, and we would go and bury ourselves and love each other in some secluded spot where I would quickly forget what I have learned, where I would never remind you of it, where I could not suffer because of it—if you loved me!"
"Oh! I do love you, I do love you!" he cried; "let us go! let us fly, save me! Be my benefactress, my angel, as you have always been! Come, and forgive me!"