taken such deep root, he tried to find a justification in some
accident. "The purse must have fallen on the floor," said he to
himself, "or I left it lying on my chair. Or perhaps I have it
about me--I am so absent-minded!" He searched himself with
hurried movements, but did not find the ill-starred purse. His
memory cruelly retraced the fatal truth, minute by minute. He
distinctly saw the purse lying on the green cloth; but then,
doubtful no longer, he excused Adelaide, telling himself that
persons in misfortune should not be so hastily condemned. There
was, of course, some secret behind this apparently degrading
action. He would not admit that that proud and noble face was a
lie.

At the same time the wretched rooms rose before him, denuded of
the poetry of love which beautifies everything; he saw them dirty
and faded, regarding them as emblematic of an inner life devoid
of honor, idle and vicious. Are not our feelings written, as it
were, on the things about us?

Next morning he rose, not having slept. The heartache, that
terrible malady of the soul, had made rapid inroads. To lose the
bliss we dreamed of, to renounce our whole future, is a keener
pang than that caused by the loss of known happiness, however
complete it may have been; for is not Hope better than Memory?
The thoughts into which our spirit is suddenly plunged are like a
shoreless sea, in which we may swim for a moment, but where our
love is doomed to drown and die. And it is a frightful death. Are
not our feelings the most glorious part of our life? It is this
partial death which, in certain delicate or powerful natures,
leads to the terrible ruin produced by disenchantment, by hopes