"When you married me through generosity, I gave myself to you through gratitude, and I loved you with all my girlish heart. I loved you as I loved my own father--almost as much; and one day, while I sat on your knee, and you were kissing me, I called you 'Father' in spite of myself. It was a cry of the heart, instinctive, spontaneous. Indeed, you were to me a father, nothing but a father. You laughed, and you said to me, 'Address me always in that way, my child; it gives me pleasure.' "We came to the city; and--forgive me, father--I fell in love. Ah! I resisted long, well, nearly two years--and then I yielded, I sinned, I became a fallen woman. "And as to him? You will never guess who he is. I am easy enough about that matter, since there were a dozen officers always around me and with me, whom you called my twelve constellations. "Father, do not seek to know him, and do not hate him. He only did what any man, no matter whom, would have done in his place, and then I am sure that he loved me, too, with all his heart. "But listen! One day we had an appointment in the isle of Becasses--you know the little isle, close to the mill. I had to get there by swimming, and he had to wait for me in a thicket, and then to remain there till nightfall, so that nobody should see him going away. I had just met him when the branches opened, and we saw Philippe, your orderly, who had surprised us. I felt that we were lost, and I uttered a great cry. Thereupon he said to me--he, my lover--'Go, swim back quietly, my darling, and leave me here with this man.' "I went away so excited that I was near drowning myself, and I came back to you expecting that something dreadful was about to happen. "An hour later, Philippe said to me in a low tone, in the lobby outside the drawing-room where I met him: 'I am at madame's orders, if she has any letters to give me.' Then I knew that he had sold himself, and that my lover had bought him. "I gave him some letters, in fact--all my letters--he took them away, and brought me back the answers. "This lasted about two months. We had confidence in him, as you had confidence in him yourself. "Now, father, here is what happened. One day, in the same isle which I had to reach by swimming, but this time alone, I found your orderly. This man had been waiting for me; and he informed me that he was going to reveal everything about us to you, and deliver to you the letters which he had kept, stolen, if I did not yield to his desires. "Oh! father, father, I was filled with fear--a cowardly fear, an unworthy fear, a fear above all of you who had been so good to me, and whom I had deceived--fear on his account too--you would have killed him--for myself also perhaps! I cannot tell; I was mad, desperate; I thought of once more buying this wretch who loved me, too--how shameful!