After a few moments of silence Marguerite began again: "Thanks, thanks, for understanding me thus. _Mon Dieu!_ Since that dreadful moment this is the first time that my grief is not unbearable, my tears not bitter, for I can relieve my heart by speaking of my sorrows. I can tell how much I loved and how much I have suffered. Alas! while in the midst of so much felicity I needed no friend to talk about it, but since,--oh, since all this affliction has come to me I have been so lonely! If you only knew what a life I have led! Obliged to hide my grief, my sad regrets, as I used to hide my delights! To whom could I tell them? Who was there to console me? The world sometimes has pity for a guilty love, but for a sacred sorrow like mine it has nothing but abuse, for it is either ridiculous or a lie. Weep thus for one's husband! Regret him so bitterly! Live only in the remembrance of one who was so dear! Who ever would believe that? And then why should I speak of it? And to whom? My relations were quite too worldly to understand my grief; and then I had been so selfish in my happy days that I had never tried to make friends. He--he alone was all I cared for. To whom would I have cared to tell how happy I was? To him, and to him alone! Besides, with all the carelessness of boundless felicity, I never even thought that misfortune could come near me." "Alas, poor friend, how miserable you must have been! To suffer alone is so frightful!" "Yes, yes, I have suffered, believe me. Sometimes, through a timidity of which I am ashamed, I was afraid of being alone. In the darkness and silence my grief would almost overpower me. It grew upon me that at times I was terrified, and then I took refuge in society. I detested it, but I needed its noise and excitement to take my mind off thoughts that were strained to such a point that I feared for my reason. When this strain was over and I was calm once more, I railed at the vain joys of the world for having caused me to forget my grief. I lamented my cowardice, and thus my days passed in constant moods of contradiction. This is not all. I knew that my sorrows were the cause of slanderous tales, and yet I neither would nor could justify myself. Oh, if you only knew how cruel it is to have nothing but the truth as a defence,--the truth which, in your eyes, is so sacred, so venerated, that it would seem a profanation to tell it to the incredulous and careless."