I cannot imagine how it was I did not fall dead on the spot.  My anguish cannot be expressed.

Before long it was proposed that we should go to the play, but excusing myself on the plea of business I returned to Paris.  As I got to my door I seemed to be in a fever, and I lay down on my bed, but instead of the rest I needed I experienced only remorse and fruitless repentance-the torments of the damned.  I began to think it was my duty to stop the marriage or die.  I was sure that Mdlle. de la Meure loved me, and I fancied she would not say no if I told her that her refusal to marry me would cost me my life.  Full of that idea I rose and wrote her a letter, strong with all the strength of tumultuous passion.  This was some relief, and getting into bed I slept till morning.  As soon as I was awake I summoned a messenger and promised him twelve francs if he would deliver my letter, and report its receipt in an hour and a half.  My letter was under cover of a note addressed to Tiretta, in which I told him that I should not leave the house till I had got an answer.  I had my answer four hours after; it ran as follows:  “Dearest, it is too late; you have decided on my destiny, and I cannot go back from my word.  Come to dinner at M. Corneman’s, and be sure that in a few weeks we shall be congratulating ourselves on having won a great victory.  Our love, crowned all too soon, will soon live only in our memories.  I beg of you to write to me no more.”

Such was my fate.  Her refusal, with the still more cruel charge not to write to her again, made me furious.  In it I only saw inconstancy.  I thought she had fallen in love with the merchant.  My state of mind may be judged from the fact that I determined to kill my rival.  The most savage plans, the most cruel designs, ran a race through my bewildered brain.  I was jealous, in love, a different being from my ordinary self; anger, vanity, and shame had destroyed my powers of reasoning.  The charming girl whom I was forced to admire, whom I should have esteemed all the more for the course she had taken, whom I had regarded as an angel, became in my eyes a hateful monster, a meet object for punishment.  At last I determined on a sure method of revenge, which I knew to be both dishonourable and cowardly, but in my blind passion I did not hesitate for a moment.  I resolved to go to the merchant at M. Corneman’s, where he was staying, to tell him all that had passed between the lady and myself, and if that did not make him renounce the idea of marrying her I would tell him that one of us must die, and if he refused my challenge I determined to assassinate him.