During that conversation last evening, the inmost depths of my melancholy had trembled at the thought that had I met her a little sooner, before she gave herself to Molan, understood and pleased her, perhaps this unreasonable and touching child would have turned to me in her need to take up with another artist those ancient and ridiculed parts of muse and inspirer. What maker of beauty, however, has not sighed for the presence near him of a charming woman’s mind, of a dear and devoted face from which to drink in courage in times of lassitude, of two weak but steady hands to clasp in his own weary ones, or a faithful shoulder on which to rest his weary brow. It was enough to have associated this sigh of regret for some minutes with the name of Jacques’ mistress for the hope of a common and spiteful adventure with this poor girl not to need dismissing. But the fact of my not nourishing a dirty gallant project did not prevent my sympathy, which was already unhealthy, growing during this talk with my comrade. That is why instead of writing to Malvina the model, according to the wise plan formed a few hours before, I followed my illogical visit of the morning by one still more illogical in the afternoon, and that imprudent day terminated by a third also foolish visit. An attack of irrationality was beginning. It is not over yet as my pen trembled in my hand at recording Jacques’ brutal phrases. On the point of setting down the details of these two other episodes which finished the prologue of this private tragedy, I had to put down the pen. I had a pain in my memories, just as a person suffers from a badly-closed wound. Nevertheless, by a contradiction which I suffered without being able to explain, a charm arises from these sorrowful souvenirs, a magic and an attraction.