Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 1.djvu/238

160 tre, or amusing herself at a picnic, it was of him that she talked incessantly to her friends. When Max left she had cried bitterly; but, nevertheless, she received the attentions of a Russian whom Max was delighted to have for a successor, because he took him for a gallant man, that is to say, for a generous one. So long as she was able to lead the mad life of women of her class, her love for Max was but an agreeable memory which sometimes made her sigh. She thought of him as one thinks of the amusements of his childhood, without however wishing to return to them; but when Arsène no longer had lovers, when she found herself abandoned, when she felt the full weight of her misery and shame, then her love for Max was purified in a measure, because it was the sole memory which awakened in her breast neither regrets nor remorse. It even raised her in her own eyes, and the more she felt herself degraded, the more she exalted Max in her imagination. "He was my friend, he loved me," she would say to herself with a sort of pride when she was seized with disgust in reflecting upon her depraved life. In prison at Minturnæ, Marius fortified his courage by saying to himself: "I overcame the Cimbri!" This pampered mistress—alas! she was that no longer—had nothing to oppose to her shame and despair but