invented with sufficient probability to arouse no contradiction.

"When I moved to Genoa I received a formal announcement of the happy
event of the birth of a son to the Count and Countess. I held that
letter in my hand for two hours, sitting on this terrace--on this
bench. Two months after, urged by Octave, by M. de Grandville, and
Monsieur de Serizy, my kind friends, and broken by the death of my
uncle, I agreed to take a wife.

"Six months after the revolution of July I received this letter, which
concludes the story of this couple:--

"'MONSIEUR MAURICE,--I am dying though I am a mother--perhaps because
I am a mother. I have played my part as a wife well; I have deceived
my husband. I have had happiness not less genuine than the tears shed
by actresses on the stage. I am dying for society, for the family, for
marriage, as the early Christians died for God! I know not of what I
am dying, and I am honestly trying to find out, for I am not perverse;
but I am bent on explaining my malady to you--you who brought that
heavenly physician your uncle, at whose word I surrendered. He was my
director; I nursed him in his last illness, and he showed me the way
to heaven, bidding me persevere in my duty.

"'And I have done my duty.

"'I do not blame those who forget. I admire them as strong and
necessary natures; but I have the malady of memory! I have not been
able twice to feel that love of the heart which identifies a woman
with the man she loves. To the last moment, as you know, I cried to
your heart, in the confessional, and to my husband, "Have mercy!" But