In fact, these women, rushing at once into his thoughts, cramped each other and lessened, as reduced to a uniform level of love that equalised them all. So taking handfuls of the mixed-up letters, he amused himself for some moments with letting them fall in cascades from his right into his left hand. At last, bored and weary, Rodolphe took back the box to the cupboard, saying to himself, “What a lot of rubbish!” Which summed up his opinion; for pleasures, like schoolboys in a school courtyard, had so trampled upon his heart that no green thing grew there, and that which passed through it, more heedless than children, did not even, like them, leave a name carved upon the wall.
“Come,” said he, “let’s begin.”
He wrote—
“Courage, Emma! courage! I would not bring misery into your life.”
“After all, that’s true,” thought Rodolphe. “I am acting in her interest; I am honest.”
“Have you carefully weighed your resolution? Do you know to what an abyss I was dragging you, poor angel? No, you do not, do you? You were coming confident and fearless, believing in happiness in the future. Ah! unhappy that we are—insensate!”
Rodolphe stopped here to think of some good excuse.
“If I told her all my fortune is lost? No! Besides, that would stop nothing. It would all have to be begun over again later on. As if one could make women like that listen to reason!” He reflected, then went on—
“I shall not forget you, oh believe it; and I shall ever have a profound devotion for you; but some day, sooner