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THE CONFESSION OF A FOOL 147
tion to form an opinion, since she had received the
respective letters from both of us.) She found the
•’duel " not without style, and admired my pluck. ’"It
is a pity," she concluded her letter, "that two men like
you and the Baron should not be friends." Further on
she gave me a detailed account of what she was doing
to while away the time. She was evidently enjoying her-
self ; she had made her way into second-rate artistic
circles, a fact which I did not like. She described an
evening spent at some assembly-rooms in the company of
a number of young men, who paid her a great deal of
attention ; she had made the conquest of a musician, a
youth who had sacrificed his family to his art. "’
What a
strange similarity between our two cases! " she remarked.
Then followed a detailed biography of the interesting
martyr and the request not to be jealous.
’•What did she mean? " I wondered, taken aback by
the half-sarcastic, half-familiar tone of her letter, which
appeared to be written between two entertainments.
Was it possible that this coldly voluptuous madonna
belonged to the class of born wantons, that she was a
coquette, a cocotte ?
I sat down at once and indited a furious scolding ; I
painted her picture as she then appeared to me. I called
her Madame Bovary ; I entreated her to break the spell
wliich Avas leading her to a precipice.
In reply, •’
as a proof of her absolute faith in me," she
sent me the letters which the young enthusiast had written
to her. Love letters !
The same old use of the term friendship, the inexplic-
able sympathy of the souls, and the whole list of the trite
and to us both so familiar words : brother and sister, little
mother, playmates, and so on, cloaks and covers under
Avhich lovers are wont to hide, to abandon themselves
ultimately to their passions.
^Vhat was I to think? Was she mentally deranged?
h 2
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