will do, madame, do not cry. I cannot bear it any longer. Other
men will tell you that you have given them life; as for myself, I
tell you, with rapture, that you have given me blank extinction.
Perhaps you guess that I am not my own, that I am bound to live
for my friends, that from this time forth I must endure the cold
chill of death, as well as the burden of life? Is it possible
that there can be so much kindness in you? Are you like the
desert tigress that licks the wounds she has inflicted?"

The Duchess burst out sobbing.

"Pray spare your tears, madame. If I believed in them at all,
it would merely set me on my guard. Is this another of your
artifices? or is it not? You have used so many with me; how can
one think that there is any truth in you? Nothing that you do or
say has any power now to move me. That is all I have to say."

Mme de Langeais rose to her feet, with a great dignity and
humility in her bearing.

"You are right to treat me very hardly," she said, holding out
a hand to the man who did not take it; "you have not spoken
hardly enough; and I deserve this punishment."

"_I_ punish you, madame! A man must love still, to punish, must
he not? From me you must expect no feeling, nothing resembling
it. If I chose, I might be accuser and judge in my cause, and
pronounce and carry out the sentence. But I am about to fulfil a
duty, not a desire of vengeance of any kind. The cruelest
revenge of all, I think, is scorn of revenge when it is in our