de Boiscoran remained unmoved.
"Oh!" he said, "I know you must think it strange. You fancy that there
is no excuse for the man who betrays the confidence of a woman who has
once given herself to him. Wait, before you judge me."
And he went on, in a firmer tone of voice,--
"At that time I thought I was the happiest man on earth; and my heart
was full of the most absurd vanity at the thought that she was mine,
this beautiful woman, whose purity was high above all calumny. I had
tied around my neck one of those fatal ropes which death alone can
sever, and, fool that I was, I considered myself happy.
"Perhaps she really loved me at that time. At least she did not
hesitate, and, overcome by the only real great passion of her life, she
told me all that was in her innermost heart. At that time she did not
think yet of protecting herself against me, and of making me her slave.
She told me the secret of her marriage, which had at one time created
such a sensation in the whole country.
"When her father, the Marquis de Brissac, had given up his place, he had
soon begun to feel his inactivity weigh upon him, and at the same time
he had become impatient at the narrowness of his means. He had ventured
upon hazardous speculations. He had lost every thing he had; and even
his honor was at stake.
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