“There can never be any shame for you, Edmée; a soul so chaste, so pure in intention …”
“Oh, don’t talk of that, dear abbé! Perhaps I am not as good as you think; I am not very orthodox in religion—nor are you, abbé! I give little heed to the world; I have no love for it. I neither fear nor despise public opinion; it will never enter into my life. I am not very sure what principle of virtue would be strong enough to prevent me from falling, if the spirit of evil took me in hand. I have read La Nouvelle Heloise, and I shed many tears over it. But, because I am a Mauprat and have an unbending pride, I will never endure the tyranny of any man—the violence of a lover no more than a husband’s blow; only a servile soul and a craven character may yield to force that which it refuses to entreaty. Sainte Solange, the beautiful shepherdess, let her head be cut off rather than submit to the seigneur’s rights. And you know that from mother to daughter the Mauprats have been consecrated in baptism to the protection of the patron saint of Berry.”
“Yes; I know that you are proud and resolute,” said the abbé, “and because I respect you more than any woman in the world I want you to live, and be free, and make a marriage worthy of you, so that in the human family you may fill the part which beautiful souls still know how to make noble. Besides, you are necessary to your father; your death would hurry him to his grave, hearty and robust as the Mauprat still is. Put away these gloomy thoughts, then, and these violent resolutions. It is impossible. This adventure of Roche-Mauprat must be looked upon only as an evil dream. We both had a nightmare in those hours of horror; but it is time for us to awake; we cannot remain paralyzed with fear like children. You have only one course open to you, and that I have already pointed out.”
“But, abbé, it is the one which I hold the most impossible of all. I have sworn by everything that is most sacred in the universe and the human heart.”
“An oath extorted by threats and violence is binding on none; even human laws decree this. Divine laws, especially in a case of this nature, absolve the human conscience beyond a doubt. If you were orthodox, I would go to Rome—yes, I would go on foot—to get you absolved from so rash a vow; but you are not a submissive child of the Pope, Edmée—nor am I.”
“You wish me, then, to perjure myself?”
“Your soul would not be perjured.”
“My soul would! I took an oath with a full knowledge of what I was doing and at a time when I might have killed myself on the spot; for in my hand I had a knife three times as large as this. But I wanted to live; above all, I wanted to see my father again and kiss him. To put an end to the agony which my disappearance must have caused him, I would have bartered more than my life, I would have bartered my immortal soul. Since then, too, as I told you last night, I have renewed my vow, and of my own free will, moreover; for there was a wall between my amiable fiancé and myself.”
“How could you have been so imprudent, Edmée? Here again I fail to understand you.”
“That I can quite believe, for I do not understand myself,” said Edmée, with a peculiar expression.
“My dear child, you must open your hear to me freely. I am the only person here who can advise you, since I am the only one to whom you can tell everything under the seal of a friendship as sacred as the secrecy of Catholic confession can be. Answer me, then. You do not really look upon a marriage between yourself and Bernard Mauprat as possible?”
“How should that which is inevitable be impossible?” said Edmée. “There is nothing more possible than throwing one’s self into the river; nothing more possible than surrendering one’s self to misery and despair; nothing more possible, consequently, than marrying Bernard Mauprat.”
“In any case I will not be the one to celebrate such an absurd and deplorable union,” cried the abbé. “You, the wife and the slave of this Hamstringer! Edmée, you said just now that you would no more endure the violence of a lover than a husband’s blow.”
“You think the he would beat me?”
“If he did not kill you.”
“Oh, no,” she replied, in a resolute tone, with a wave of the knife, “I would kill him first. When Mauprat meets Mauprat … !”
“You can laugh, Edmée? O my God! you can laugh at the thought of such a match! But, even if this man had some affection and esteem for you, think how impossible it would be for you to have anything in common; think of the coarseness of his ideas, the vulgarity of his speech. The heart rises in disgust at the idea of such a union. Good God! In what language would you speak to him?”
Once more I was on the point of rising and falling on my panegyrist; but I overcame my rage. Edmée began to speak, and I was all ears again.
“I know very well that at the end of three or four days I should have nothing better to do than cut my own throat; but since sooner or later it must come to that, why should I not go forward to the inevitable hour? I confess that I shall be sorry to leave life. Not all
