was always a shrewd one, you see, and nothing was lost upon me.
Everything went straight to the mark and pierced my heart. I saw quite
well that it was all sham and pretence, but there is no help for such
things as these. I felt less at my ease at their dinner-table than I
did downstairs here. I had nothing to say for myself. So these grand
folks would ask in my son-in-law's ear, 'Who may that gentleman be?'
--'The father-in-law with the money bags; he is very rich.'--'The
devil, he is!' they would say, and look again at me with the respect
due to my money. Well, if I was in the way sometimes, I paid dearly
for my mistakes. And besides, who is perfect? (My head is one sore!)
Dear Monsieur Eugene, I am suffering so now, that a man might die of
the pain; but it is nothing to be compared with the pain I endured when
Anastasie made me feel, for the first time, that I had said something
stupid. She looked at me, and that glance of hers opened all my veins.
I used to want to know everything, to be learned; and one thing I did
learn thoroughly--I knew that I was not wanted here on earth.

"The next day I went to Delphine for comfort, and what should I do
there but make some stupid blunder that made her angry with me. I was
like one driven out of his senses. For a week I did not know what to
do; I did not dare to go to see them for fear they should reproach me.
And that was how they both turned me out of the house.

"Oh God! Thou knowest all the misery and anguish that I have endured;
Thou hast counted all the wounds that have been dealt to me in these
years that have aged and changed me and whitened my hair and drained
my life; why dost Thou make me to suffer so to-day? Have I not more
than expiated the sin of loving them too much? They themselves have
been the instruments of vengeance; they have tortured me for my sin of
affection.