she pleased by imprudent and frivolous parents, suffering from neurosis,
in consequence of the unwholesome friendships which she contracted at
the convent-school, instructed by what she saw and heard and knew was
going on around her, in spite of her deceitful and artificial conduct,
knowing that neither her father nor her mother, who were very proud of
their race, as well as avaricious, would ever agree to let her marry the
man whom she had taken a liking to, that handsome fellow who had little
besides visionary ideas and debts, and who belonged to the middle
classes, she laid aside all scruples, thought of nothing but of
belonging to him altogether, of taking him for her lover, and of
triumphing over his desperate resistance as an honorable man.

"By degrees, the unfortunate man's strength gave way, his heart grew
softened, his nerves became excited, and he allowed himself to be
carried away by that current which buffeted him, surrounded him and left
him on the shore like a waif and a stray.

"They wrote letters full of temptation and of madness to each other, and
not a day passed without their meeting, either accidentally, as it
seemed, or at parties and balls. She had given him her lips in long,
ardent caresses, and she had sealed their compact of mutual passion with
kisses of desire and of hope. And at last she brought him to her room,
almost in spite of himself."

The doctor stopped, and his eyes suddenly filled with tears, as these
former troubles came back to his mind, and then in a hoarse voice, he
went on, full of horror of what he was going to relate:

"For months he scaled the garden wall, and holding his breath and
listening for the slightest noise, like a burglar who is going to break