He looked at me, as he delivered this speech in a hesitating way, with a keen perspicacity before which I did not flinch. If my face expressed astonishment, it was at his assurance in the comedy. He no doubt attributed it to my surprise at his fresh relations with her whom he continued to call Queen Anne, and whom I knew deserved to be brutally called Anne the Courtesan. I realize to-day that in observing this strange discretion about his triumph he did not yield to a simple prudent calculation. Without a doubt he was prudent, but he also counted on my thinking him sincere, and putting more energy into destroying my model’s ever-recurring suspicions. There was, too, in this discretion succeeding the cynicism of his former confidences a singular turn in his self-conceit, which is more obvious now at a distance of time. I have often noticed in the person whom women call in their slang “the man who talks” this anomaly. It is quite apparent. He tells you one by one, embellishing them where necessary, the least important preliminaries of an adventure with a person whose most trifling imprudence ought to be sacred to him. Then when he sees that you are quite convinced that he is going to become that woman’s lover, he defends himself at the last stage with a defence which compromises her as much as a positive avowal. This final silence prevents him from judging himself too severely. The same vanity which made him talkative before makes him silent afterwards. Vanity or remorse, calculation or a last remnant of honour, whatever was the cause of this sudden interruption in Jacques’ confidences, it is certain that on this occasion he did not depart from his correct attitude of discretion. It made my discretion seem the less meritorious. But suddenly events were precipitated with the frightful rapidity of catastrophies in which discussions and half-confidences have no place. I should like to narrate this _dénouement_, not such as I saw it, but such as it was told to me. God! if I could reproduce for this story the natural and violent eloquence with which little Favier used to retrace these tragic scenes, this clumsy narrative would live and become tinted with passion’s warm tinge. Why did I not at once put it on paper in the form of notes, these burning avowals which so long pursued me? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VIII