“You will remember those few days of curiosity when you wished to know the man who performed the household miracles you had sometimes noticed. I thought,--forgive me, madame,--I believed you might love me. Your good-will, your glances interpreted by me, a lover, seemed to me so dangerous--for me--that I invented that story of Malaga, knowing it was the sort of liaison which women cannot forgive. I did it in a moment when I felt that my love would be communicated, fatally, to you. Despise me, crush me with the contempt you have so often cast upon me when I did not deserve it; and yet I am certain that, if, on that evening when your aunt took Adam away from you, I had said what I have now written to you, I should, like the tamed tiger that sets his teeth once more in living flesh, and scents the blood, and-- “Midnight.” “I could not go on; the memory of that hour is still too living. Yes, I was maddened. Was there hope for me in your eyes? then victory with its scarlet banners would have flamed in mine and fascinated yours. My crime has been to think all this; perhaps wrongly. You alone can judge of that dreadful scene when I drove back love, desire, all the most invincible forces of our manhood, with the cold hand of gratitude,--gratitude which must be eternal. “Your terrible contempt has been my punishment. You have shown me there is no return from loathing or disdain. I love you madly. I should have gone had Adam died; all the more must I go because he lives. A man does not tear his friend from the arms of death to betray him. Besides, my going is my punishment for the thought that came to me that I would let him die, when the doctors said that his life depended on his nursing. “Adieu, madame; in leaving Paris I lose all, but you lose nothing now in my being no longer near you. “Your devoted “Thaddeus Paz.” “If my poor Adam says he has lost a friend, what have I lost?” thought Clementine, sinking into a chair with her eyes fixed on the carpet. The following letter Constantin had orders to give privately to the count:-- “My dear Adam,--Malaga has told me all. In the name of all your future happiness, never let a word escape you to Clementine about your visits to that girl; let her think that Malaga has cost me a hundred thousand francs. I know Clementine’s character; she will never forgive you either your losses at cards or your visits to Malaga. “I am not going to Khiva, but to the Caucasus. I have the spleen; and at the pace at which I mean to go I shall be either Prince Paz in three years, or dead. Good-by; though I have taken sixty-thousand francs from Nucingen, our accounts are even. “Thaddeus.” “Idiot that I was,” thought Adam; “I came near to cutting my throat just now, talking about Malaga.”