For if he had not deserved all the ignominious accusations which Mr. Frasne hurled at him, he was guilty none the less toward his family for having believed he had the right to give them up. He accused his mistress for her imprudence in thus dishonouring him, for whose love he had been degraded. But was it really her love that had degraded him? He attributed all his sensibilities to love, as the harmonies in those legendary lyres that hung in trees were due the wind--love which he had so coveted in his at once studious and ecstatic youth, and which had passed across his heart as the warm winds across the lyres’ strings that waited for them. And he blamed it for enthusiasms and weaknesses that had their source in him alone. In his distracted retrospect across his life he summoned up the memory of Edith’s eyes, her mouth, her every movement. Yes, his heart had been hung up to catch this song of her grace, the caresses of her voice, the flame of her eyes. He would leave the woman, but he would not disown his love. And, besides, what had he to reproach Edith with? What did she suspect, though it was through her fault, of this lamentable drama in which a whole race rolled in the dust? Nothing, surely. She had taken this money as she had stolen hearts, without meaning any ill, and believing she was within her rights. If he warned her of his danger, she would be astonished, and without hesitation, no doubt, she would return to Chambéry to proclaim her lover’s innocence to his judges. He did not want to profit by such generosity. He thought it better that she should always remain in ignorance, that she should run no risk for herself. He would leave this evening--no, not this evening, to-morrow morning, without saying anything to her, after having made good the amount of her wrongfully taken dowry, so that she should not want for anything. But what was to become of her, thus abandoned? Had he not also some duty toward her, whose whole life was love? He tried to imagine her future. He saw her cruelly torn, cursing him and weeping for him by turns, calling for him in the sacred wood, among the chapels, in all the places that had been the witness of their tenderness. He shared truly in her agony. However, there was so much of life’s resource in her, such a frenzy of living, that she would hold out against her fate in the end and find herself. Had he not seen her rise against him, trembling and revolting against him, when he had spoken to her of dying? Yes, she would find herself again, she would resist fate and live. And he felt his heart yearn at the thought of her being loved again, the thought that perhaps some day this devouring flame which consumed her should burn again for some one else. “No, not that,” he sighed; “I don’t wish that.” It was the last struggle.