Will you take me for your wife?
I am worthy of it--I swear it to you in the presence of that Heaven which is looking down upon us!" "Dear madam--dear child--your kindness, your affection move me to the depths of my soul; in mercy, be more calm; let me retain a gleam of reason!" "Ah! if your heart speaks, listen to it, sir! It is not with reason that I can be judged! Alas! I feel it! you still doubt me, you still doubt my past life.

Oh, Heavens! that opinion of the world which I have always scorned, how it is killing me now!" "No, madam, you are mistaken; but what could I offer you in exchange for all you wish to sacrifice for my sake--for the habits, the tastes, the pleasures of your whole life ?" "But that life inspires me with horror! You think that I would regret it?
You think that some day I may again become the woman I have been, the madcap you have known ?--you think so! And how can I help your believing it?
And yet I know very well that I would never cause you that sorrow, nor any other--never! I have discovered in your eyes a new world I did not know--a more dignified, more lofty world, of which I had never conceived the idea--and outside of which I can no longer live.

Ah! you must certainly feel that I am telling you the truth!" "Yes, madam, you are telling me the truth--the truth of the hour--of a moment of fever and excitement; but this new world, which appears dimly to you now--this ideal world in which you desire to seek an eternal refuge against mere transient evils--would never keep all it seems to promise.
Disappointment, regret, misery await you within it--and do not await you alone.

I know not if there be a man gifted with a sufficiently noble mind, with a sufficiently lofty soul to make you love the new existence of which you are dreaming to preserve in the reality the almost divine character which your imagination imparts to it; but I do know that such a task, sweet as it might be, is beyond my strength; I would be insane, I would be a wretch, if I were to accept it." "Is that your final decision?
Cannot reflection alter it in any way ?" "In no way." "Farewell then, sir--ah! unhappy woman that I am!--farewell!" She grasped my hand, which she wrung convulsively, and then left me.
After she had disappeared, I sat down on the bench, upon which she had been seated.

There, my dear Paul, my whole strength gave way.