_September_ 4th.
I MARK this day as one of the saddest days of my life. Oscar has shown
Madame Pratolungo to me, in her true colors. He has reasoned out this
miserable matter with a plainness which it is impossible for me to
resist. I have thrown away my love and my confidence on a false woman:
there is no sense of honor, no feeling of gratitude or of delicacy in her
nature. And I once thought her--it sickens me to recall it! I will see
her no more.
[Note.--Did it ever occur to you to be obliged to copy out, with your own
hand, this sort of opinion of your own character? I can recommend the
sensation produced as something quite new, and the temptation to add a
line or two on your own account to be as nearly as possible beyond mortal
resistance.--P.]
Oscar and I met at the stairs, at eleven o'clock, as we had arranged.
He took me to the west pier. At that hour of the morning (excepting a few
sailors who paid no heed to us) the place was a solitude. It was one of
the loveliest days of the season. When we were tired of pacing to and
fro, we could sit down under the mellow sunshine, and enjoy the balmy sea
air. In that pure light, with all those lovely colors about us, there was
something, to my mind, horribly and shamefully out of place in the talk
that engrossed us--talk that still turned, hour after hour, on nothing
but plots and lies, cruelty, ingratitude, and deceit!
I managed to ask my first question so as to make him enter on the subject
at once--without wasting time in phrases to prepare me for what was to
come.
"When my aunt mentioned that letter at dinner yesterday," I said, "I
fancied that you knew something about it. Was I right?"
"Very nearly right," he answered. "I can't say I knew anything about it.
I only suspected that it was the production of an enemy of yours and
mine."
"Not Madame Pratolungo?"
"Yes! Madame Pratolungo."
I disagreed with him at the outset. Madame Pratolungo and my aunt had
quarreled about politics. Any correspondence between them--a confidential
correspondence especially--seemed to be one of the most unlikely things
that could take place. I asked Oscar if he could guess what the letter
contained, and why it was not to be given to me until Grosse reported
that I was quite cured.
"I can't guess at the contents--I can only guess at the object of the
letter," he said.
"What is it?"
"The object which she has had in view from the first--to place every
possible obstacle in the way of my marrying you."
"What interest can she have in doing that?"
"My brother's interest."
"Forgive me, Oscar. I cannot believe it of her."
We were walking, while these words were passing between us. When I said
that, he stopped, and looked at me very earnestly.
"You believed it of her, when you answered my letter," he said.