I, on the other hand, am full of doubts; I should
drag you down to a wearisome life, without grandeur of any kind,
--a life ruined by my own conduct. Camille is free; she can go and
come as she will; I am a slave.
You forget that I love and am beloved. The situation in which I
have placed myself forbids my accepting homage. That a man should
love me, or say he loves me, is an insult. To turn to another
would be to place myself at the level of the lowest of my sex.
You, who are young and full of delicacy, how can you oblige me to
say these things, which rend my heart as they issue from it?
I preferred the scandal of an irreparable deed to the shame of
constant deception; my own loss of station to a loss of honesty.
In the eyes of many persons whose esteem I value, I am still
worthy; but if I permitted another man to love me, I should fall
indeed. The world is indulgent to those whose constancy covers, as
with a mantle, the irregularity of their happiness; but it is
pitiless to vice.
You see I feel neither disdain nor anger; I am answering your
letter frankly and with simplicity.
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