“So, though the wife in me is invulnerable, never speak to me thus again. If you fail to respect this simple prohibition, I warn you, the door of this house will be closed against you forever. I believed in pure friendship, in a voluntary brotherhood more stable than any natural relationship. I was mistaken! I looked for a friend who would not judge me, a friend who would listen to me in those hours of weakness when a voice of reproof is murderous, a saintly friend with whom I should have nothing to fear. Youth is magnanimous, incapable of falsehood, self-sacrificing, and disinterested; as I saw your constancy, I believed, I confess, in some help from heaven; I believed I had met a spirit that would be to me alone what the priest is to all, a heart into which I might pour out my sorrows when they are so many, and utter my cries when they insist on being heard, and would choke me if I suppressed them. In that way my life, which is so precious to these children, might be prolonged till Jacques is a man. But this, perhaps, is too selfish. Can the tale of Petrarch’s Laura be repeated?—I deceived myself, this is not the will of God. I must die at my post like a soldier, without a friend. My confessor is stern, austere—and my aunt is dead.”
Two large tears, sparkling in the moonlight, dropped from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks to her chin; but I held out my hand in time to catch them, and drank them with pious avidity, excited by her words, that rang with those ten years of secret weeping, of expended feeling, of incessant care, of perpetual alarms—the loftiest heroism of your sex. She gazed at me with a look of mild amazement.
“This,” said I, “is the first, holy communion of love. Yes; I have entered into your sorrows, I am one with your soul, as we become one with Christ by drinking His sacred blood. To love even without hope is happiness. What woman on earth could give me any joy so great as that of having imbibed your tears!—I accept the bargain which must no doubt bring me suffering. I am yours without reserve, and will be just whatever you wish me to be.”
She checked me by a gesture, and said:
“I consent to the compact if you will never strain the ties that bind us.”
“Yes,” said I. “But the less you grant me, the more sure must I be that I really possess it.”
“So you begin by distrusting me,” she replied, with melancholy doubtfulness.
“No, by one pure delight. For, listen, I want a name for you which no one ever calls you by; all my own, like the affection that we give each other.”
“It is much to ask,” said she. “However, I am less ungenerous than you think me. Monsieur de Mortsauf calls me Blanche. One person only, the one I loved best, my adorable aunt, used to call me Henriette. I will be Henriette again for you.”
I took her hand and kissed it, and she yielded it with the full confidence which makes woman our superior—a confidence that masters us. She leaned against the brick parapet and looked out over the river.
“Are you not rash, dear friend,” said she, “to rush with one leap to the goal of your course? You have drained at the first draught a cup offered you in all sincerity. But a true feeling knows no half measures; it is all or nothing.—Monsieur de Mortsauf,” she went on after a moment’s silence, “is above everything loyal and proud. You might perhaps be tempted for my sake to overlook what he said; if he has forgotten it, I will remind him of it tomorrow. Stay away from Clochegourde for a few days; he will respect you all the more. On Sunday next, as we come out of church, he will make the first advances. I know him. He will make up for past offences, and will like you the better for having treated him as a man responsible for his words and deeds.”
“Five days without seeing you, hearing your voice.”
“Never put such fervor into your speech to me,” said she.
We twice paced the terrace in silence. Then, in a tone of command, which showed that she had entered into possession of my soul, she said:
“It is late; good night.”
I wished to kiss her hand; she hesitated; then she gave it me, saying in a voice of entreaty:
“Never take it unless I give it you; leave me completely free, or else I shall be at your bidding, and that must not be.”
“Goodbye,” said I.
I went out of the little gate at the bottom of the garden, which she opened for me. Just as she was shutting it, she opened it again, and held out her hand, saying:
“You have been indeed kind this evening. You have brought comfort into all my future life.—Take it, my friend, take it.”
I kissed it again and again, and when I looked up I saw that there were tears in her eyes.
She went up to the terrace and looked after me across the meadow. As I went along the road to Frapesle, I could still see her white dress in the moonlight; then, a few minutes later, a light was shining in her window.
“Oh, my Henriette!” thought I, “the purest love that ever burnt on earth shall be yours.”
I got home to Frapesle, looking back at every step. My spirit was full of indescribable, ineffable gladness. A glorious path at last lay open to the self-devotion that swells every youthful heart, and that in me had so long lain inert. I was consecrated, ordained, like a priest who at one step starts on a totally new life. A simple “Yes, madame,” had pledged me to
