His courtesy and gentleness were but a mask for
licentiousness,--his apparent truth was but a disguise for mere
reckless and inconstant passion. I had to find this bit by bit,--and
oh, how cruel was the disillusion! How I prayed for him, wept for
him, tried to think that if he loved me he might yet endeavour to be
nobler and truer for my sake. But his love was not great enough for
that. What he wanted was the body of me, not the soul. What _I_
wanted of him was the soul, not the body! So we played at cross
purposes,--each with a different motive,--and gradually, as I came
to recognise how much baseness and brutality there is in mere
libertinism,--how poor and paltry an animal man becomes when he
serves himself and his passions only, my attraction for him
diminished,--I grew to realise that I could never raise him out of
the mud, because he had lived by choice too long in it,--I could
never persuade him to be true, even to himself, because he found the
ways of falsehood and deceit more amusing. He did unworthy things,
which I could not, with all my admiration for him, gloze over or
excuse;--in fact, I found that in his private life and code of
honour he was very little better than Miraudin,--and Miraudin, as
you know, one CANNOT receive!"
"He is in Rome also," said Madame Bozier, "I saw his name placarded
in the streets only yesterday, and also outside one of the leading
theatres.
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