However, I did not wish to go away without letting Marguerite know why I went. Only a man who really cares no more for his mistress leaves her without writing to her. I made and remade twenty letters in my head. I had had to do with a woman like all other women of the kind. I had been poetizing too much. She had treated me like a school-boy, she had used in deceiving me a trick which was insultingly simple. My self-esteem got the upper hand. I must leave this woman without giving her the satisfaction of knowing that she had made me suffer, and this is what I wrote to her in my most elegant handwriting and with tears of rage and sorrow in my eyes: “MY DEAR MARGUERITE: I hope that your indisposition yesterday was not serious. I came, at eleven at night, to ask after you, and was told that you had not come in. M. de G. was more fortunate, for he presented himself shortly afterward, and at four in the morning he had not left. “Forgive me for the few tedious hours that I have given you, and be assured that I shall never forget the happy moments which I owe to you. “I should have called to-day to ask after you, but I intend going back to my father’s. “Good-bye, my dear Marguerite. I am not rich enough to love you as I would nor poor enough to love you as you would. Let us then forget, you a name which must be indifferent enough to you, I a happiness which has become impossible. “I send back your key, which I have never used, and which might be useful to you, if you are often ill as you were yesterday.” As you will see, I was unable to end my letter without a touch of impertinent irony, which proved how much in love I still was. I read and reread this letter ten times over; then the thought of the pain it would give to Marguerite calmed me a little. I tried to persuade myself of the feelings which it professed; and when my servant came to my room at eight o’clock, I gave it to him and told him to take it at once. “Shall I wait for an answer?” asked Joseph (my servant, like all servants, was called Joseph). “If they ask whether there is a reply, you will say that you don’t know, and wait.”