"This Russian was imprudent in giving his address in advance! For I might go to trouble the first peace of this improvised honey-moon by a duel. So, at midnight she gives me a rendezvous for the next evening at her home, and at five o'clock in the morning she yields to Moscowitch in her own home, in her ball dress, and at about seven o'clock the two lovers take the express for Nice. Either it was well planned, and she decoyed me shamefully or, as I think, it is a matter of an impromptu affair and she held her modesty of soul in contempt so as to repel me. It is evident that Moscowitch waited for her at the door of the Aubry mansion, in a carriage, and that she let herself be carried off. Ah! he is a clever rascal. I am quite anxious to have some details. If he really followed my ironic advice, if the plan I gave him was good, I am ... I am truly below the most naive school boy. Well! there still remains for me the satisfaction of a dilettante: I have not myself won the battle, but like a staff-chief major general, I have directed the victory's course. Yes, in short, I am the organizer of my own defeat.... Now, it is a matter of producing a strict reasoning and not to lose myself in the by-ways of analysis. A proof? There is none, or not yet. I should, to the very end, respect the dignity of my sentiment. Coincidences, probabilities, but in the end she will give me an explanation. Then I shall judge. What reproaches? She has followed her pleasure." He entered a café where warm drinks comforted him. At this moment he perceived that he was pierced with cold and that his hands were shivering. It was not only with cold that, he trembled, but his pride would not admit it and haughtily clothed itself in the cloak of irony. He did not even admit that his heart could bleed under a real wound; the griefs where he condescended to quench his original thirst were divine, voluntary, and not the work of a human hand. He possessed to a high degree the art of crucifying and stigmatizing himself, like a visionary, of leading his wounded heart to frightful tortures, to a slow agony; he had the art of being his own executioner. He had voluntarily sweated with anguish, but that the gentle thrust of a woman's delicate gauntlet should drive the crown of thorns into his skull, no, no, no! "For after all, complicity is essential to suffering and it must be voluntary; and that is a favor no creature will ever obtain from me." Quite honestly, he reflected: