"You know," said Eugenie, when she showed me this letter, "that even if I were free to accept an offer, and this right reverend gentleman pleased me, I could never stoop to such a mere bargaining as this; but I love you, my friend, and you alone, and I show you this letter only because we have no secrets from each other." Thus, at the very moment when she was sacrificing for my sake an ample and secure provision, I, on my part, was concealing from her my new and altered position in life; yet at the same time I knew she had nothing, for her father was not dead, as Madame de T. supposed, and had never sent her a single _sou_. I was on the point of confessing all; but false shame restrained me, and I set off for Versailles. I was like a man who vainly endeavors to break his bonds. When I quitted Eugenie and galloped through the Champs Elysées and up to the quarters of my troop I breathed freely. I felt I was at liberty; but twenty-four hours had hardly elapsed ere I grew weary of this same liberty and longed to see Eugenie again, and to resume that yoke of which I was ashamed I knew not why, for it was easy, and had become necessary to me. What would have become of me if Eugenie had accepted the offers of that libertine priest and left me! So in the middle of the night I mounted my horse and went back to Paris. I found her, as usual, thinking of me, and hoping, if not expecting, my speedy return. I then took to play, but its chances failed to excite me. I suffered myself to be dragged out to those supper parties which I had once found so pleasant, but it was only to cast my eyes round the circle in search of _her_, and when they found her not, nor ever rested on a face so beaming as hers, weariness soon crept over me, and I found the dishes tasteless, the wine vapid, and the conversation dull. In the mean while, I had reached that period of life at which ambition becomes a ruling passion, and mine was to be rich. Without rendering me avaricious, Mademoiselle d'Ermay had taught me to know the value of money. I had known poverty and endured most of its attendant privations, and I was now in the possession of a large and unexpected fortune, but I wanted more. Just at this time I received a letter from my mother. M. de Marigny here paused for a moment and appeared lost in thought; he was like a man who hesitates to finish the story he has begun, and who, having disclosed one half of his secret, has some misgiving as to telling the other half, when, suddenly seizing my hand and looking me full in the face. "Sir!" said he, in a tone of voice so solemn that it sent the blood back to my heart, and caused my not very weak nerves to tremble; "I was considering whether I ought not to require you to swear that you will never reveal to any mortal ear what I am about to relate (the perspiration stood in large drops on his venerable forehead); but 'tis no matter--I have begun and I will finish--my story may be useful as a lesson and a warning to others."