I felt that
I must conquer my independence. I led a life of dissipation. To divert
my mind, to forget my real life in fictitious enjoyments I was gay, I
shone, I gave fetes, I played the princess, and I ran in debt. At home
I could forget myself in the sleep of weariness, able to rise the next
day gay, and frivolous for the world; but in that sad struggle to
escape my real life I wasted my fortune. The revolution of 1830 came;
it came at the very moment when I had met, at the end of that _Arabian
Nights'_ life, a pure and sacred love which (I desire to be honest) I
had longed to know. Was it not natural in a woman whose heart,
repressed by many causes and accidents, was awakening at an age when a
woman feels herself cheated if she has never known, like the women she
sees about her, a happy love? Ah! why was Michel Chrestien so
respectful? Why did he not seek to meet me? There again was another
mockery! But what of that? in falling, I have lost everything; I have
no illusions left; I had tasted of all things except the one fruit for
which I have no longer teeth. Yes, I found myself disenchanted with
the world at the very moment when I was forced to leave it.
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