Prosperity swallows up our
energy just as adversity obscures our virtues. Back once more in my
Hotel de Saint-Quentin, I gazed about me a long while in the garret
where I had led my scholar's temperate life, a life which would
perhaps have been a long and honorable one, and that I ought not to
have quitted for the fevered existence which had urged me to the brink
of a precipice. Pauline surprised me in this dejected attitude.
"'Why, what is the matter with you?' she asked.
"I rose and quietly counted out the money owing to her mother, and
added to it sufficient to pay for six months' rent in advance. She
watched me in some alarm.
"'I am going to leave you, dear Pauline.'
"'I knew it!' she exclaimed.
"'Listen, my child. I have not given up the idea of coming back. Keep
my room for me for six months. If I do not return by the fifteenth of
November, you will come into possession of my things. This sealed
packet of manuscript is the fair copy of my great work on "The
Will,"' I went on, pointing to a package. 'Will you deposit it in the
King's Library? And you may do as you wish with everything that is
left here.'
"Her look weighed heavily on my heart; Pauline was an embodiment of
conscience there before me.
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