"I ought to be so, I am more feeble," she replied.

"But," I continued with the persistence of a child, "listen to me now
if only for the first, the last, the only time in your life."

"Speak, then," she said; "speak, or you will think I dare not hear
you."

Feeling that this was the turning moment of our lives, I spoke to her
in the tone that commands attention; I told her that all women whom I
had ever seen were nothing to me; but when I met her, I, whose life
was studious, whose nature was not bold, I had been, as it were,
possessed by a frenzy that no one who once felt it could condemn; that
never heart of man had been so filled with the passion which no being
can resist, which conquers all things, even death--

"And contempt?" she asked, stopping me.

"Did you despise me?" I exclaimed.

"Let us say no more on this subject," she replied.

"No, let me say all!" I replied, in the excitement of my intolerable
pain. "It concerns my life, my whole being, my inward self; it
contains a secret you must know or I must die in despair. It also
concerns you, who, unawares, are the lady in whose hand is the crown
promised to the victor in the tournament!"

Then I related to her my childhood and youth, not as I have told it to