Yes, Marie, you pleased me so entirely that I always thought you beautiful. Yes, even that time when you suffered so terribly with a bad cold, that you scarcely dared show yourself.
Perhaps you were not very pretty. If so, I never noticed it. I only knew that it was all my earthly joy to hold you in my arms and to kiss you—then, as at all times.
Fancy! even then I did not understand how it was with me. Now I can say from a wider experience: that when a man's love is proof against a bad cold, he can be sure of his love.
XIXIunderstood nothing. I am one of those calculating natures that know exactly how far they will go, and who say 'stop' as soon as they have reached the limit, but who, after having made the make-believe offering to prudence, do not mind beginning all over again, this time to continue—beyond all bounds.
There were no lack of omens and signs, which might have told me my fate. But I said to myself: You are not superstitious, what do you care about the rubbish the finger of fate is writing on your wall?
And as yet the night was far away when Babylon was to be destroyed.
