The street was dark and deserted. Around the assembly rooms, or inn—whichever you prefer—people were thronging. The windows were lighted up, the strains of the regimental band were borne to me on the evening breeze. I walked slowly; I felt melancholy. "Can it be possible," I thought, "that my sole mission on earth is to destroy the hopes of others? Ever since I began to live and to act, it seems always to have been my fate to play a part in the ending of other people's dramas, as if, but for me, no one could either die or fall into despair! I have been the indispensable person of the fifth
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