"No," he wrote, "I was not capable of deserving you. I was unworthy of such a generous, pure, and unselfish affection. I tired out your patience, O my sister, my mother! Even the angels would have been tired of me! Ah! Thérèse, as I return to health and life, my memory becomes clearer, and I look into my past as into a mirror, which shows me the spectre of a man whom I once knew, but whom I no longer understand. Surely, that poor devil was mad; don't you think, Thérèse, that, as I drew nearer to that ghastly physical illness from which you saved me, I may have been, even three or four months beforehand, in the grasp of a moral illness which took from me all consciousness of my words and my acts? Ah! if that were so, should you not have forgiven me? But what I am saying lacks common-sense, alas! What is wrong-doing, if not a moral malady? Could not the man who kills his father allege the same excuse that I do? Good, evil--this is the first time that idea has ever bothered me. Before I knew you and made you suffer, my poor love, I had never thought of it. Evil was to my mind a monster of low estate, the apocalyptic beast that soils with his hideous caresses the offscourings of mankind in the unhealthy bogs of society; could evil come near me, the man of fashion, the Parisian _beau_, the son of the Muses? Ah! fool that I was, I imagined, because my beard was perfumed and my hands neatly gloved, that my caresses would purify the great harlot of the nations, debauchery, my fiancée, who had bound me to her with chains as noble as those with which convicts are bound in the galleys! And I sacrificed you, my poor, sweet mistress, in my brutal egotism, and after that I held my head erect, saying: 'It was my right, she belonged to me; nothing that I have the right to do can be evil!'--Ah! miserable, miserable creature that I am! my behavior was criminal; and I never suspected it! Nothing would make me understand it but to lose you, you, my only treasure, the only mortal who had ever loved me and who was capable of loving the insane and ungrateful child that I was! Not until I saw my guardian angel veil her face and resume her flight heavenward did I realize that I was forever alone and abandoned on earth!" A large part of this first letter was written in a lofty tone, the sincerity of which was confirmed by realistic touches and abrupt changes of manner, characteristic of Laurent.