Every evening the old
marechal came to sit with me and comfort me with kind and consoling
words. His white hair and the many proofs he gave me of paternal
tenderness led me to turn all the feelings of my heart upon him, and I
felt myself his daughter. I accepted his presents, hiding none of my
caprices from him, for I saw how he loved to gratify them. I heard one
fatal evening that all Paris believed me the mistress of the poor old
man. I was told that it was then beyond my power to recover an
innocence thus gratuitously denied me. They said that the man who had
abused my inexperience could not be lover, and would not be my
husband. The week in which I made this horrible discovery the duke
left Paris. I was shamefully ejected from the house where he had
placed me, and which did not belong to him. Up to this point I have
told you the truth as though I stood before God; but now, do not ask a
wretched woman to give account of sufferings which are buried in her
heart. The time came when I found myself married to Danton. A few days
later the storm uprooted the mighty oak around which I had thrown my
arms. Again I was plunged into the worst distress, and I resolved to
kill myself. I don't know whether love of life, or the hope of
wearying ill-fortune and of finding at the bottom of the abyss the
happiness which had always escaped me were, unconsciously to myself,
my advisers, or whether I was fascinated by the arguments of a young
man from Vendome, who, for the last two years, has wound himself about
me like a serpent round a tree,--in short, I know not how it is that I
accepted, for a payment of three hundred thousand francs, the odious
mission of making an unknown man fall in love with me and then
betraying him.
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