Pardon me if I do not write a longer letter, but those who say they are going to cure me wear me out with bloodletting, and my hand refuses to write any more.
"MARGUERITE GAUTIER." The last two words were scarcely legible.

I returned the letter to Armand, who had, no doubt, read it over again in his mind while I was reading it on paper, for he said to me as he took it: "Who would think that a kept woman could have written that ?" And, overcome by recollections, he gazed for some time at the writing of the letter, which he finally carried to his lips.
"And when I think," he went on, "that she died before I could see her, and that I shall never see her again, when I think that she did for me what no sister would ever have done, I can not forgive myself for having left her to die like that.

Dead! Dead and thinking of me, writing and repeating my name, poor dear Marguerite!" And Armand, giving free outlet to his thoughts and his tears, held out his hand to me, and continued: "People would think it childish enough if they saw me lament like this over a dead woman such as she; no one will ever know what I made that woman suffer, how cruel I have been to her! how good, how resigned she was! I thought it was I who had to forgive her, and to-day I feel unworthy of the forgiveness which she grants me.

Oh, I would give ten years of my life to weep at her feet for an hour!" It is always difficult to console a sorrow that is unknown to one, and nevertheless I felt so lively a sympathy for the young man, he made me so frankly the confidant of his distress, that I believed a word from me would not be indifferent to him, and I said: "Have you no parents, no friends?
Hope.

Go and see them; they will console you.