It was perhaps accidental that before presenting myself at the Malfentis’, I had severed a fairly long-standing tie with a woman who might perhaps have deserved better treatment. But this accident provokes some thought. My decision to make this break was inspired by quite a frivolous motive. The poor girl had thought that a good way to bind me more tightly to herself was to make me jealous. On the contrary, the mere suspicion was enough to make me abandon her definitively. She couldn’t have known at the time how possessed I was by the idea of marriage, and that I believed it impossible to
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