her calm, pure, serene. And here I must confess that I have always
thought that Othello was not only stupid, but showed very bad taste.
Only a man who is half a Negro could behave so: indeed Shakespeare
felt this when he called his play 'The Moor of Venice.' The sight of
the woman we love is such a balm to the heart that it must dispel
anguish, doubt, and sorrow. All my rage vanished. I could smile again.
Hence this cheerfulness, which at my age now would be the most
atrocious dissimulation, was the result of my youth and my love. My
jealousy once buried, I had the power of observation. My ailing
condition was evident; the horrible doubts that had fermented in me
increased it. At last I found an opening for putting in these words:
'You have had no one with you this morning?' making a pretext of the
uneasiness I had felt in the fear lest she should have disposed of her
time after receiving my first note.--'Ah!' she exclaimed, 'only a man
could have such ideas! As if I could think of anything but your
suffering. Till the moment when I received your second note I could
think only of how I could contrive to see you.'--'And you were
alone?'--'Alone,' said she, looking at me with a face of innocence so
perfect that it must have been his distrust of such a look as that
which made the Moor kill Desdemona. As she lived alone in the house,
the word was a fearful lie. One single lie destroys the absolute
confidence which to some souls is the very foundation of happiness.

"To explain to you what passed in me at that moment it must be assumed
that we have an internal self of which the exterior _I_ is but the
husk; that this self, as brilliant as light, is as fragile as a shade
--well, that beautiful self was in me thenceforth for ever shrouded in
crape. Yes; I felt a cold and fleshless hand cast over me the
winding-sheet of experience, dooming me to the eternal mourning into
which the first betrayal plunges the soul. As I cast my eyes down that