Ah! what a comfort when I persuade myself to speak in this way! I can pity myself instead of being a horror to myself, as happens when I recall the cold resolution, which I cherished in my mind, consigned to my notebook, and verified alas! by the event, the resolution, to injure this girl without loving her, from motives of purely psychological curiosity, from the pleasure of acting, of governing a living soul, of contemplating at will and directly this mechanism of passion which I had until then only studied in books, from the vanity of enriching my mind by a new experience. But it is well, I could not have wished otherwise, impelled as I was by my heredities and my education, removed into the new medium where I was thrown by chance, and bitten, as I was by this ferocious spirit of rivalry against the insolent young man who was my opposite? But this pure and tender girl was worthy of meeting a man who was not a cold and murderous calculating machine. Only to think of her melts and rends my heart. I did not notice at first sight that perfection of the lines of the face, that brilliance of complexion, that royalty of bearing which distinguishes the very beautiful woman. Everything in her physiognomy was a delicate demi-tint, from the shade of her chestnut hair to the misty gray of her eyes and to her complexion which was neither pale nor rosy. One thought of modesty when studying her expression, and of fragility when remarking her feet, and hands, and the almost too minute grace of her movements. Although she was rather short, she appeared tall because of the noble way in which her head was set on her slender neck. If Count André reproduced one of their common ancestors by an evident atavism, she resembled her father, but with so charming an ideality of lines that one could not admit the resemblance unless they were side by side. It was easy, however, to recognize in her the nervous disposition which produced hypochondria in her father. Charlotte had a sensibility which was almost morbid, which was revealed at times by a slight tremulousness of hands and lips, those beautiful sinuous lips where dwelt a goodness almost divine. Her firm chin showed a rare strength of will in so frail an envelope, and I now understand that the depth of her eyes, sometimes motionless as if fixed on some object visible to herself alone, betrayed a fatal tendency to a fixed idea. The first trait that I specially observed was her extreme kindness, and this was brought to my notice by little Lucien. The child told me that his sister had several times wished him to ask me if there was anything lacking in my room.