"Brigitte! Brigitte!" I cried, "in the name of Heaven, do not speak! God is my witness I was not born such as you see me; during my life I have been neither suspicious nor distrustful, I have been undone, my heart has been seared by the treachery of others. A frightful experience has led me to the very brink of the precipice, and for a year I have seen nothing but evil here below. God is my witness that up to this day I did not believe myself capable of playing the ignoble role I have assumed, the meanest role of all, that of a jealous lover. God is my witness that I love you and that you are the only one in the world who can cure me of the past. I have had to do, up to this time, with women who deceived me, or who were unworthy of love. I have led the life of a libertine; I bear on my heart certain marks that will never be effaced. Is it my fault if calumny, if base suggestion, to-day planted in a heart whose fibers were still trembling with pain and prompt to assimilate all that resembles sorrow, has driven me to despair? I have just heard the name of a man I have never met, of whose existence I was ignorant; I have been given to understand that there has been between you and him a certain intimacy, which proves nothing; I do not intend to question you; I have suffered from it, I have confessed to you and I have done you an irreparable wrong. But rather than consent to what you propose, I will throw it all in the fire. Ah! my friend, do not degrade me; do not attempt to justify yourself, do not punish me for suffering. How could I, in the bottom of my heart, suspect you of deceiving me? No, you are beautiful and you are true; a single glance of yours, Brigitte, tells me more than words could utter, and I am content. If you knew what horrors, what monstrous deceit, the child who stands before you has seen! If you knew how he had been treated, how they have mocked at all that is good, how they have taken pains to teach him all that leads to doubt, to jealousy, to despair! Alas! alas! my dear mistress, if you knew whom you love! Do not reproach me but rather pity me; I must forget that other beings than you exist. Who can know through what frightful trials, through what pitiless suffering I have passed! I did not expect this, I did not anticipate this moment. Since you have become mine, I realize what I have done; I have felt, in kissing you, that my lips were not, like yours, unsullied. In the name of Heaven, help me live! God made me a better man than the one you see before you."