I awoke, still in his arms, and he had never put forth so much eloquence, so much affection, so many tears, to implore his pardon. He confessed that he was the lowest of men; but, he said, there was one thing, and only one, that raised him somewhat in his eyes, and that was the love he had always had for me, and which none of his vices, none of his crimes had had the power to stifle. Hitherto he had fought against the appearances which accused him on all sides. He had struggled against overwhelming evidence in order to retain my esteem. Thenceforth, being no longer able to justify himself by falsehood, he took a different course and assumed a new rôle, in order to move me and conquer me. He laid aside all artifice--perhaps I should say all sense of shame--and confessed all the villainy of his life. But amid all that filth he forced me to distinguish and to understand what there was in his character that was truly noble, the faculty of loving, the everlasting vigor of a heart in which the most exhausting weariness, the most dangerous trials, did not extinguish the sacred flame. "My conduct is base," he said to me, "but my heart is still noble. It still bleeds for its crimes; it has retained, in all the vigor of its first youth, the sentiment of justice and injustice, horror of the evil it does, enthusiastic admiration of the good it beholds. Your patience, your virtues, your angelic kindliness, your pity, as inexhaustible as God's, can never be displayed in favor of a being who appreciates them better or admires them more. A man of regular morals and sensitive conscience would consider them more natural and would appreciate them less. With such a man you would be simply a virtuous woman; while with a man like me you are a sublime woman, and the debt of gratitude which is piling up in my heart is as great as your sacrifices and your sufferings. Ah! it is something to be loved and to be entitled to a boundless passion, and from what other man have you so good a right to claim such a passion as from me? For whom would you subject yourself again to the tortures and the despair you have undergone? Do you think there is anything else in life but love? For my part, I do not. And do you think that it is a simple matter to inspire it and to feel it? Thousands of men die incomplete, having never known any other love than that of the beasts. Often a heart capable of loving seeks in vain where to bestow its love, and comes forth pure of all earthly passions, perhaps to find a place in heaven. Ah! when God vouchsafes to us on earth that profound, passionate, ineffable sentiment, we must no longer desire or hope for paradise, Juliette; for paradise is the blending of two hearts in a kiss of love. And when we have found it here on earth, what matters it whether it be in the arms of a saint or of one of the damned? What matters it whether the man you love be accursed or adored among men, so long as he returns your love? Is it I whom you love, or is