And I waited eagerly for an answer from these motionless features, believing in that momentary hallucination that I would receive a sign of affirmation. But the white and wrinkled forehead bowed not; then I thought I could hear from the most secret recesses of my heart the steady voice of my father, saying: "You loved me once with this profound, unchanging love; I have done more for you than Hélène has, I have given you both life and fortune. And it is in the enjoyment of that fortune I am forgotten! Poor child!" Overcome with terror, I continued: "But Hélène loves me sincerely, does she not, father?" And as I steadfastly gazed on the motionless figure, whose silence so overpowered me, I repeated in my anxiety: "Do you not believe in her love? I am, then, mistaken in what I suppose to be the love I bear to her, since you stare upon me thus, oh, my father!" "Did I not warn you against trusting in the admirations your fortune would excite, and tell you never to trust to deceitful appearances?" "But, great God! what deception can Hélène be capable of,--such a noble and candid young girl, she who always loved you as a father and me as a brother? Has she not given herself freely to me, confiding in my love, careless of all the rest, and so absorbed by it that she has even recklessly exposed her reputation--her sole treasure--to the evil tongue of slander?" Alas! pardon, oh, my father! Perhaps it was but a base and sordid instinct of my own which I mistook for your answer. Doubtless, ashamed to acknowledge my own baseness, I was willing to attribute to your influence the vile, infernal thought, this first horrible doubt which has come to trouble for ever the smiling and pure stream of my beliefs; pardon, father, pardon once more, if in that moment when, overcome with anguish, I asked you, "What reason can Hélène have for feigning love for me?" my brutal selfishness answered, "Your fortune, for Hélène is poor!" Since that fatal day, constantly tormented by an incessant and absorbing idea, for ever tortured by doubt,--that two-bladed sword which wounds both him who wields it, and him against whom it is raised,--I have persistently sought, and, to my sorrow, generally believed myself to have discovered, the most infamous motives hidden under the most innocent appearances, the most odious projects under the most expansive and generous devotion. I have very often, alas! pitilessly killed with a word the tenderest and sweetest enthusiasms; but never, O God! never can I forget the grievous, heartrending shock with which scepticism tore out from my heart its sacred and primal faith.