long dream of bliss. And I am supremely miserable, more so than yourself, for I have sinned more against you than you have against me. I confess it, dear love. I prostrate myself before you, and I cry for forgiveness. Can you not forgive me? Will you not take me to your heart again, and let me try to atone for all the past? My life is so barren without you and my darling child. Do you suppose that anything can compensate me for your loss? As for Mme. de V., she is nothing to me—less than nothing; a toy to pass away the time that goes so slowly without you; an opiate that for a moment makes me forget my pain, and sometimes, even while I seem to yield to her witcheries, I loathe her because she has come between us. But it shall never be again, dear love, if you but say the word. Come back to me, Fenella, and I will swear to wipe her (and all like her) out of my life, as surely as I would kill the viper that lay across your path. Oh, when I think of all that she has cost me, how bitterly I hate her!"
There was much more in the same strain, but this was sufficient for Lucille, who lay back on her pillow with the paper crushed in her hand, and jealousy and revenge gleaming from her eyes. This was how he thought of her, then. This was how he wrote and spoke of her to his wife—his faithless, flirting wife—the murderess, by her own account, of Count de Mürger, the unworthy
