It was not long before she felt the only lasting love is that which is purified by religion, that only the love of Our Lord and Mary gives the lie to the ups and downs of our emotions. Alone among our affections, it seems to grow and get stronger with time, while other loves burn so brightly and are spent so quickly in our hearts of ash. Nevertheless she loved Raymond as much as she could love anyone, but a day came when she saw that Raymond no longer loved her. That day made her foresee the even more atrocious day when she would be quite abandoned by the man for whom she herself had abandoned the honours of the altar, and that dreaded day also came. Beatrix now found herself, alas, with no-one to turn to on earth or in heaven. She sought in vain to console herself with memories and to take refuge in hopes. The flowers in the scapular had withered like those of her happiness. The well spring of her tears and her prayer had dried up. The fate that Beatrix had made for herself had been realised. The unfortunate woman accepted her damnation. The higher the fall on the path to virtue, the more ignominious it is, the more irreparable it is, and Beatrix had fallen from on high. At first her opprobrium frightened her, and then she ended up by getting used to it, the spring in her soul having broken. Fifteen years went by like this, and for fifteen years the guardian angel that baptism had granted to her cradle, the angel with the heart of a brother who had loved her so much, covered his eyes with his wings and wept. Oh! How many treasures those fleeting years carried away with them! Innocence, modesty, youth, beauty, love, those roses in life that only flower once, and, in addition, conscience that compensates for all other losses! The jewels that had formerly adorned her, the impious tributes that debauchery pays to crime, provided her, for a time, with a resource too apt to dwindle. She was left alone, abandoned, an object of contempt for others as for herself, given over to the insolent disdain of vice, and hateful to virtue, a repellent example of shame and misery that mothers showed their children to turn them away from sin! She wearied of being a burden to pity, of only getting alms that a pious repugnance often nailed to the hands of charity, of only being helped on one side by people whose brows blushed to give her a piece of bread. One day she wrapped herself in her rags, which had been when new luxurious clothes. She decided to ask for her daily bread or a bed for the night from those who had not known her! She flattered herself that she could hide her infamy behind her wretchedness. She set out, the poor beggar, possessing nothing but the flowers that she had formerly taken from the Virgin's bouquet, falling now, one by one, into dust under her dried up lips!