What could it avail me now?
Would Roxalanne believe the tale I had to tell?
Would she not think, naturally enough, that I was but making the best of the situation, and that my avowal of the truth of a story which it was not in my power to deny was not spontaneous, but forced from me by circumstances?
No, there was nothing more to be done.
A score of amours had claimed my attention in the past and received it; yet there was not one of those affairs whose miscarriage would have afforded me the slightest concern or mortification.

It seemed like an irony, like a Dies ire, that it should have been left to this first true passion of my life to have gone awry.
I slept ill when at last I sought my bed, and through the night I nursed my bitter grief, huddling to me the corpse of the love she had borne me as a mother may the corpse of her first-born.
On the morrow I resolved to leave Toulouse--to quit this province wherein so much had befallen me and repair to Beaugency, there to grow old in misanthropical seclusion.

I had done with Courts, I had done with love and with women; I had done, it seemed to me, with life itself.
Prodigal had it been in gifts that I had not sought of it.

It had spread my table with the richest offerings, but they had been little to my palate, and I had nauseated quickly.

And now, when here in this remote corner of France it had shown me the one prize I coveted, it had been swift to place it beyond my reach, thereby sowing everlasting discontent and misery in my hitherto pampered heart.
I saw Castelroux that day, but I said no word to him of my affliction.
He brought me news of Chatellerault.