I am a gentleman. I will not take by force what you would
not willingly give. I have never played with a woman's heart nor with
a man's honor. And as for Catharine, I laugh. It is true that I
kissed her cheeks. I had been drinking, and the wine was still in my
head. I had left you. My heart was light and happy. I would have
kissed a spaniel, had a spaniel crossed my path instead of a Catharine.
There was no more taint to those kisses I gave to her than to those you
have often thoughtlessly given to the flowers in your garden. I loved
you truly; I love you still. Catharine is a poor pretext. There is
something you have not told me. Say truthfully that your belief is
that I was secretly paying court to that poor Madame de Brissac, and
that I wore the grey cloak that terrible night; that I fled from France
because of these things. You say that you are about to become a nun.
You do, then, believe in God. Well," releasing her, "I swear to you by
that God that I never saw Madame de Brissac; that I was far away from
Paris on the nineteenth of February. You have wantonly and cruelly
destroyed the only token I had which was closely associated with my
love of you.
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