Nobody knew anything. Neither the Superior of the Convent where she had
been brought up until she was sixteen, nor the servants who had waited
on her, nor the governesses who had finished her education, could
remember that Elaine had been difficult to check or teach, or that she
had had any other ideas than those of her age. She had certainly shown
no precocious coquetry and disquieting instincts; she had had no
equivocal cousinly relationships, when if the bridle is left on their
neck at all, and one of them has learned at school what love is, the two
big children yield to the fatal law of sex, and begin the inevitable
eclogue of Daphne and Chole over again.
However, Oh! I felt it too much for it to be nothing but a chimera and a
mirage, it was no _virgin_ who threw her arms round my neck so lovingly,
and who returned my first kisses so _deliciously_, who was attracted by
my society, who gave no signs of surprise and uttered no complaint, who
appeared to forget everything when in my society. No, no, a thousand
times no, that could not have been a pure woman.
I ought to have cast off that intoxication which was bewitching me, and
to have rushed out of the room where such a lie was being consummated; I
ought to have profited by her moments of amiable weakness, while she was
incapable of collecting her thoughts, when she would with tears have
confessed an old fault, for which the unhappy girl had not, perhaps,
been altogether responsible. Perhaps by my entreaties, or even perhaps
by violence, in terror at my furious looks, when my features would have
been distorted by rage, and my hands clenched in spite of myself in a
gesture of menace and of murder, I might have forced her to open her
heart, to show me its defilement, and to tell me this sad love episode.
How do I know whether her disconsolateness might not have moved me to
pity, whether I should not have wept with her at the heavy cross that we
both of us had to bear, whether I should not have forgiven her and
opened my arms wide, so that she might have thrown herself into them
like into a peaceful refuge?
Would not any man, or vicious collegian on the lookout for innocent
girls, have perceived her nervousness, her vice? Would he not have
hypnotized her, as it were, by amorous touches, by skillful caresses and
reduced her to the absolute passiveness of an animal, who had been taken
unawares, without any care for the morrow, or what the consequences of
such a fault might be?
Or was I completely her dupe and the dupe of a villain? Had she loved,
and did she still love the man who had first possessed her, who had been
her first lover? Who could tell me, or come to my aid? Who could give me
the proofs, the real, undeniable proofs, either that I was an infamous
wretch to suspect Elaine, whom I ought to have worshiped with my eyes
shut, or that she was guilty, that she had lied, and that I had the
right to cast her out of my life and to treat her like a worthless
woman!