“You are not well?” I asked timidly.
“I feel better now,” she replied; and, becoming more tranquil, she looked up, and seeing tears in my eyes, asked, “Why do you weep, Alamontade?”
“Can I remain unmoved by your sorrows?” I answered, bending down to her. Silently we sat absorbed in our feelings, hand in hand, gazing at each other. A tear rolled down her cheek, which I kissed away, and drew the sufferer closely to my heart, unconscious of what I was doing. During this embrace our fears evaporated with the glow of our cheeks; and what we called friendship, was changed into love.
We parted; ten times we bade each other farewell, and as often I clasped her in my arms, forgetting the separation.
Keeling as if intoxicated, I entered my room; the harp, wreath, and window, terrified me.
I had never been in a greater state of confusion than I was on the following morning. I could not understand myself, and wavered between contradictions. Madame Bertollon appeared to love me; but hitherto she had heroically struggled with feelings which seemed to wound the nobility of her mind. I was the wretch who, without loving her, could encourage her passion, and fan the fatal flame by which she must be consumed, and I must be dishonoured still more than the unhappy woman herself.
In vain I called to mind the sacredness of my duties; in vain I disclosed to myself the base ingratitude I committed against Bertollon’s generous friendship; in vain I remembered my own and Clementine’s vows; all that once had been to her pleasing and estimable had lost its power and influence. The tumult of my senses continued without intermission: only Bertollon’s lovely wife floated in my imagination; I still felt on my lip the glow of her kiss, and my flattered vanity overwhelmed the earnest warnings of my conscience with illusive sophistry.
“Wretch! you will feel remorse, you will some day blush at your own disgraceful act, and the snow of advanced age will not quench the burning of an evil conscience!”
With these words I endeavoured to arouse my better feelings. While I still revelled in the remembrance of the previous evening, and dark forebodings were rising in my mind, I sat down at the table to write to Madame Bertollon, to describe to her the danger to which we should both expose ourselves by further intercourse, and to tell her that to continue worthy of her friendship I must leave her and Montpellier.
But while reason dictated her precepts, and I wished to make the first heavy sacrifice to virtue, I wrote to Madame Bertollon the most solemn oaths of my attachment, declaring falsely that a secret passion for her had long consumed me, and that I saw my happiness only in her love. I entreated and conjured her not to let me despair, and unrolled to her imagination a vivid picture of our bliss.