“As for the rest:  women like you are not made for unholy love like ours.  Their charm is their purity, and losing that, they lose everything.  But it is a blessing to them to encounter one wretch, like myself, who cares to say—­Forget me, forever!  Farewell!”

He left her, passed from the room with rapid strides, and, slamming the door behind him, disappeared.  Madame Lescande, who had listened, motionless, and pale as marble, remained in the same lifeless attitude, her eyes fixed, her hands clenched—­yearning from the depths of her heart that death would summon her.  Suddenly a singular noise, seeming to come from the next room, struck her ear.  It was only a convulsive sob, or violent and smothered laughter.  The wildest and most terrible ideas crowded to the mind of the unhappy woman; the foremost of them, that her husband had secretly returned, that he knew all—­that his brain had given way, and that the laughter was the gibbering of his madness.

Feeling her own brain begin to reel, she sprang from the sofa, and rushing to the door, threw it open.  The next apartment was the dining-room, dimly lighted by a hanging lamp.  There she saw Camors, crouched upon the floor, sobbing furiously and beating his forehead against a chair which he strained in a convulsive embrace.  Her tongue refused its office; she could find no word, but seating herself near him, gave way to her emotion, and wept silently.  He dragged himself nearer, seized the hem of her dress and covered it with kisses; his breast heaved tumultuously, his lips trembled and he gasped the almost inarticulate words, “Pardon!  Oh, pardon me!”

This was all.  Then he rose suddenly, rushed from the house, and the instant after she heard the rolling of the wheels as his carriage whirled him away.

If there were no morals and no remorse, French people would perhaps be happier.  But unfortunately it happens that a young woman, who believes in little, like Madame Lescande, and a young man who believes in nothing, like M. de Camors, can not have the pleasures of an independent code of morals without suffering cruelly afterward.

A thousand old prejudices, which they think long since buried, start up suddenly in their consciences; and these revived scruples are nearly fatal to them.

Camors rushed toward Paris at the greatest speed of his thoroughbred, Fitz-Aymon, awakening along the route, by his elegance and style, sentiments of envy which would have changed to pity were the wounds of the heart visible.  Bitter weariness, disgust of life and disgust for himself, were no new sensations to this young man; but he never had experienced them in such poignant intensity as at this cursed hour, when flying from the dishonored hearth of the friend of his boyhood.  No action of his life had ever thrown such a flood of light on the depths of his infamy in doing such gross outrage to the friend of his purer days, to the dear confidant of the generous thoughts and proud aspirations of his youth.  He knew he had trampled all these under foot.  Like Macbeth, he had not only murdered one asleep, but had murdered sleep itself.