I was glad that I had not met her. It would be impossible to say that so charming a woman had become repugnant to me, but it is certain that I feared more than I desired her presence. Her scepticism, which she appeared to have renounced one day only to overwhelm me with it on the next, had produced an injurious effect upon me, and had caused me inexpressible suffering. At the end of two months, notwithstanding all the efforts I made to appear happy, my mother discovered the terrible sadness that permeated my mind. Everyone observed a great change for the better in me, and at first she was pleased with it. My manner of life was altogether austere, and my language as grave and sensible as that of an old magistrate. Without being devout, I professed to be religious. I no longer scandalized simple people by my voltairianism. I judged everything impartially and criticised without bitterness those of whom I did not approve. All this was edifying, excellent; but I had no taste for anything, and I bore my life as if it were a burden. I was no longer young, I experienced no more the ecstasy of enthusiasm or the allurements of gayety. I had time then, notwithstanding my important occupations to write verses, and I would have made time in any case, even had none been allowed me, for I hardly slept any more and I sought none of those amusements that absorb three quarters of a young man’s life. I no longer thought of love, I fled from the world, I ceased to parade myself with men of my age before the eyes of the beautiful ladies of the land. I was retiring, meditative, austere, very gentle with my own people, very modest with everybody, very ardent in legal discussions. Thus I was esteemed an accomplished young man, but I was thoroughly unhappy. And it was because I nourished with a strange stoicism, an insane passion without its parallel. I was in love with a ghost, I could not even say with a dead woman. All my historical researches resolved themselves into this. The three demoiselles d’Ionis had possibly never existed save in legend. Their history, fixed by the latest chroniclers at the period of Henri II, was already old and uncertain, even at that date. No evidence of them remained: no title, name or crest among the d’Ionis family papers that my father happened to have in his possession on account of the suit, not even a tombstone in any part of the country.