"It is the woman here upon whom must fall the greater blame," said he.
But at that I cried out in hot remonstrance, adding that I had yet another
vileness to confess--for it was now that for the first time I realized it.
And I related to him how last night I had repudiated her, cast her off and
fled, leaving her to bear the punishment alone.
Of my conduct in that he withheld his criticism. "The sin is hers," he
repeated. "She was a wife, and the adultery is hers. More, she was the
seducer. It was she who debauched your mind with lascivious readings, and
tore away the foundations of virtue from your soul. If in the cataclysm
that followed she was crushed and smothered, it is no more than she had
incurred."
I still protested that this view was all too lenient to me, that it sprang
of his love for me, that it was not just. Thereupon he began to make clear
to me many things that may have been clear to you worldly ones who have
read my scrupulous and exact confessions, but which at the time were still
all wrapped in obscurity for me.
It was as if he held up a mirror--an intelligent and informing mirror--in
which my deeds were reflected by the light of his own deep knowledge. He
showed me the gradual seduction to which I had been subjected; he showed me
Giuliana as she really was, as she must be from what I had told him; he
reminded me that she was older by ten years than I, and greatly skilled in
men and worldliness; that where I had gone blindly, never seeing what was
the inevitable goal and end of the road I trod, she had consciously been
leading me thither, knowing full well what the end must be, and desiring
it.
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