"Hope!" he cried, gnashing his teeth. "If a tigress had me in her claws, you might, with far more show of reason, call out to me only to give up hope with life! But this woman! Do you know a more terrible enemy of human happiness than this lie--this cold, rouged, heartless, unnatural lie? If she only hated me as immeasurably as she pretends to love me, truly, I myself should think it too soon to despair. A mortal can become satiated even with hate; and malice, too, is something of which one can get tired. But what is to be hoped when it is all merely a game, and the innermost nature of one's enemy is the nature of a comedian? Every spark of conscience has been extinguished in this wretched woman since her girlhood; her life is to her nothing but a _role_; her love and hate have become merely a question of costumes--applause and money are her highest and holiest conceptions. And she fears for both, if she lets me go free. It is flattering to her--one success more--to be able to pose before herself and the world as an injured innocent, a robbed wife, a mother whose child has been taken from her--and for that reason she refuses all my entreaties and offers with indignation, for she knows well that I would rather give up any happiness in life than let her have the child. If you had read the letters I have wasted upon her in these last few weeks! Letters which, I can truly say, were written with my heart's blood--they would have made a tigress human; and this woman---read what she answers me! I have carried on this wretched correspondence behind your back, in the hope of taking upon myself all that was bitter and humiliating--for what words have I not stooped to use!--I have borne all the agony of these last weeks, in order that I might at last lay nothing but the happy results at your feet. Now read what sort of echo came to me from that stony heart, and then say whether a man need necessarily be a master in despairing, to give up all hope here!"