Well, so it is with a man who cherishes a woman in his heart
when the woman is forced to disdain him for his ugliness or his
deformity; he ends by knowing so much of love that he becomes
seductive, just as the sick man recovers his health; stupidity alone
is incurable. I have had neither father nor mother since I was six
years old; I am now twenty-five. Public charity has been my mother,
the procureur du roi my father. Oh! don't be troubled," he added,
seeing Ernest's gesture; "I am much more lively than my situation.
Well, for the last six years, ever since a woman's eye first told me I
had no right to love, I do love, and I study women. I began with the
ugly ones, for it is best to take the bull by the horns. So I took my
master's wife, who has certainly been an angel to me, for my first
study. Perhaps I did wrong; but I couldn't help it. I passed her
through my alembic and what did I find? this thought, crouching at the
bottom of her heart, 'I am not so ugly as they think me'; and if a man
were to work upon that thought he could bring her to the edge of the
abyss, pious as she is."
"And have you studied Modeste?"
"I thought I told you," replied Butscha, "that my life belongs to her,
just as France belongs to the king.
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