When a creature who has all her past to reproach herself with is taken all at once by a profound, sincere, irresistible love, of which she had never felt herself capable; when she has confessed her love, how absolutely the man whom she loves dominates her! How strong he feels with his cruel right to say: You do no more for love than you have done for money.
They know not what proof to give.

A child, says the fable, having often amused himself by crying "Help! a wolf!" in order to disturb the labourers in the field, was one day devoured by a Wolf, because those whom he had so often deceived no longer believed in his cries for help.
It is the same with these unhappy women when they love seriously.

They have lied so often that no one will believe them, and in the midst of their remorse they are devoured by their love.
Hence those great devotions, those austere retreats from the world, of which some of them have given an example.
But when the man who inspires this redeeming love is great enough in soul to receive it without remembering the past, when he gives himself up to it, when, in short, he loves as he is loved, this man drains at one draught all earthly emotions, and after such a love his heart will be closed to every other.
I did not make these reflections on the morning when I returned home.
They could but have been the presentiment of what was to happen to me, and, despite my love for Marguerite, I did not foresee such consequences.

I make these reflections to-day.

Now that all is irrevocably ended, they a rise naturally out of what has taken place.
But to return to the first day of my liaison.