Virtue has its temptations like everything else, far more dangerous because we are not on the lookout for them. Before I knew you, I dreamed of marriage. Perhaps those whose existence is irreproachable dream about something else; in this way we compensate for having but one nature and for living on only one side of happiness. I had never, even in moments of complete abandon, believed that my condition was definitive or even lasting. In my family, I had known admirable examples of feminine tenderness. My religious ideas led me to see in marriage the only blameless and permissible ideal. I came to imagine that a very gentle, very affectionate, very serious young woman might one day teach me to love her. Except at home, I had never known similar young women. I thought of those who smiled pallidly in the pages of old books. Julie von Charpentier or Therese de Brunswick. They were rather vague images and, unhappily, very pure ones. In any case, my dear, a dream is not a hope. One makes do with it; one thinks it even sweeter when one believes it impossible, because then one does not have the threat of living it someday.

What should I have done? One does not dare tell everything to a young woman, even when her spirit is already the spirit of a woman. I would have lacked the words; I would have given my acts either a diminished or an exaggerated image. To say everything was to lose you. Had you consented to marry me nonetheless, it would always have cast a shadow over whatever confidence you had in me. I needed that confidence to oblige me, in some way, not to betray it. I believed it was my right (or rather my duty) not to reject the one chance of salvation life gave me. I felt I had come to the end of my courage: I understood that, alone, I should never get well. At that time, I wanted desperately to get well. One tires of living only with the furtive, despised forms of human happiness. With a word, I could have broken our tacit engagement: I could have found excuses; it would have been enough to say that I was not in love with you. I refrained, not because the princess, my sole protector, would never have forgiven me; I refrained because I had hope in you. I let myself slide into … I shall not say into this happiness (my dear, we are not happy), but rather into this crime. The desire to behave properly carried me into lower depths than the worst motives: I stole your future. I brought you nothing, not even the great love you counted on. What virtues I had were the accomplices of this lie; and my egotism was as hateful as it deemed itself proper.