‘What oath will you have me take?’ he continued, as he threw the whole intensity of his soul into every word. ‘Marie!—answer me, I implore you,—if not from love, from pity at what I have undergone. If you will not think of me as I believed you did, look on me as an animal that was in pain and suffering from an evil you had caused. What means this fearful revulsion of your feelings?’
He grasped her hands whilst he spoke, until the Marchioness felt them as though they had been in a vice of hot iron. But she returned no answer. That fearful aggravation which woman can exert with such crushing power,—that frigid and apparently insensible demeanour, the colder in proportion as the heart she has drawn into her toils is anguished and convulsed, was driving Gaudin to distraction. ‘Marie!’ he again cried, ‘do you not believe in the love which I bear for you?’
‘It is not love, Sainte-Croix,’ at length she replied. ‘A liaison like ours has little love to nourish its continuance; passion and jealousy can be its only ties of endurance, and sooner or later it must end in misery. It is my turn now to say—let us part, for ever.’
‘Part!’ cried Gaudin rapidly—‘never! What fearful change has passed over your feelings? How can I assure you of my truth, Marie. Think on what I underwent for your sake in the gloomy cells of the Bastille. Look at me now—at your feet, so blindly, servilely in your power, that I could hate myself for such concession, had not my reason taken flight before your influence over me. Be satisfied with the crime—by committing which both our souls are lost—as a sufficient safeguard of our future attachment; if you will take no more human assurance. Believe in me, if not from truth, from mutual guilt, and reign my sole, adored one.’
Subdued by his overcharged feelings, his head fell upon the lap of the Marchioness as he uttered the foregoing words with wild and impassioned energy, and he burst into tears. It is a strange sight, that of a man weeping: and when Marie saw a man like Gaudin de Sainte-Croix thus overcome and at her feet, she was for the moment affected. But she returned no answer; and would have remained silent until her companion in guilt and passion again spoke, had not a sudden interruption diverted her attention. A short hurried moan, which, low as it was, teemed with anguish, sounding from the group of figures as though one of the statues had uttered it, caused her to start affrighted from the coral bank on which she was seated. Sainte-Croix also heard it even through his excitement, and started to his feet; whilst the Marchioness rushed immediately behind the statues to discover the cause. There was another cry of alarm, and she returned leading forth Louise Gauthier. The girl had sought a retreat from the glare and tumult of the crowd within the grotto, previous to Sainte-Croix’s arrival, and on his approach had retired behind the statues to conceal herself, imagining until he spoke that he was some lounger who had entered merely from curiosity, and would soon depart.
The calm expression on the features of the Marchioness for once gave way to a withering look of hate and jealousy. Gaudin started back as the words, ‘Louise Gauthier here!’ burst almost involuntarily from his lips; and then, paralysed by the sudden apparition of the trembling Languedocian, he remained silent.
The Marchioness was the first to speak.
‘So!’ she exclaimed, quivering with emotion, in a voice almost stifled by her anger; ‘this was the reason that you named the grotto for a rendezvous, and it appears I came too soon. There—take your latest conquest—the servant of Madame Scarron. She is yours—we meet no more.’
With a glance of contempt at Louise, she threw her arm away, and, impelling her towards Sainte-Croix, was about to leave the grotto, when Louise caught hold of her robe and tried to draw her back.
‘Stop, madame,’ she cried, ‘you are wrong. I was here by accident,—on my soul, and by our Lady, this is the truth.’