"Then you really abandoned her first? I like that better for your sake!" "Yes, I understand; it is ridiculous to be betrayed, it is glorious to have taken the first step. That is the way I used to reason with you, that was our code; but I have changed my ideas altogether concerning all such matters since I have been in love. I betrayed her, I have been deserted, I am in despair: therefore our former theories had no common-sense. Find in the theory of life which we used to put in practice together an argument which will relieve me of my regret and my suffering, and I will say that you are right." "I shall seek no arguments, my dear fellow; suffering is not to be argued with. I pity you because you are unhappy; but I am wondering if there is a woman in existence who deserves to be mourned so deeply, and if Mademoiselle Jacques would not have done better to forgive an act of infidelity, than to dismiss you in your present desperate state. For a mother, she seems to me a trifle stern and vindictive!" "That is because you don't know how guilty and absurd I have been. An act of infidelity! she would have forgiven that, I am sure; but insults, reproaches!--and worse than that, Vérac! I said something to her that no self-respecting woman can ever forget: '_You bore me_!'" "Yes, that is a rough thing to say, especially when it is true. But suppose it was not true? suppose you simply said it in a moment of anger?" "No! it was mental weariness. I had ceased to love her. Stay, it was worse than that: I was never able to love her when she was mine. Just remember that, Vérac; laugh if you please, but remember that for your own guidance. It is very possible that you will wake up some fine morning, sated with sham pleasures and violently in love with a virtuous woman. That may happen to you as it has happened to me, for I do not think that you are any more dissipated than I used to be. Well, when you have overcome that woman's resistance, probably the same thing will happen to you as to me: having acquired the deplorable habit of making love to women you despise, you will be doomed to fall back into those cravings for a barbarous sort of liberty of which dignified love has a horror. Thereupon, you will feel like a wild animal tamed by a child, and always ready to devour him in order to break its chain. And some day, when you have killed the helpless little keeper, you will fly all alone, roaring with joy and shaking your mane; but then--then the wild beasts of the desert will frighten you, and, because you have once learned to know the cage, you will care no more for liberty. However slight the bond, and however unwillingly your heart may have accepted it, it will regret it as soon as it is broken, and it will have a horror of solitude, yet be powerless to choose between love and libertinism. That is a form of suffering which you do not yet know. God grant that you may never know it! And meanwhile laugh and jeer as I used to do!