than I am," I thought to myself, in an effort to deceive
myself. "I ought to warn her, perhaps show myself
a little more reserved in yielding to her desires." The
truth was that I deliberately dismissed from my mind
every notion of this kind, that I dreaded the probable
consequences of such a challenge even more than the
greatest possible misfortune in the world.
In my rare moments of clear-mindedness, of frankness with myself, I understood that beneath her air of sweetness, beneath her naivete of a spoiled child, beneath the robust and vibrant passions of her flesh Juliette concealed a powerful desire to be always beautiful, adored, paid court to, concealed a fierce selfishness which would not flinch before any cruelty, before any moral crime! . . . I realized that she loved me less than the last piece of cloth, that she would have sacrificed me for a cloak or a cravat or a pair of gloves. . . . Once drawn into such a life she could not stop. . . . And then what? . . . Cold shivers passed up and down my frame from head to heels. . . . That she should leave me, no, no, that I did not want!
The most painful moment to me was in the morning when I woke up. With eyes closed, pulling the cover over my head, my body huddled up into a ball, I used to ponder over my situation with terrible anguish. And the more faulty she appeared to me, the more desperately I clung to Juliette. No matter how often I said to myself that my money would soon be gone, that the credit on which I could dishonestly prolong the agony of hope against hope for another week or two, would eventually be denied to me; I clung to the present and rabidly evolved all sorts of impossible plans. I pictured myself accomplishing superhuman tasks in the course of one week. I dreamed of finding millions in some hackney coach. Fabulous inheritances
