"Then, allow me to love, to be mad, at my ease; to be criminal, perhaps, for if I again see her, I fear I shall kill her."
"Or fall upon your knees. Ah, ah, Maurice, Maurice, to love an aristocrat, I never could have credited it! It is like poor Osselin with the Marquise de Charny."
"No more, Lorin, I beseech you."
"Maurice, I will cure you, or may the Devil take me! I do not wish you to be drawn in the lottery of Saint Guillotine, as the grocer of the Rue des Lombards observes. Maurice, you will exasperate me! Maurice, you will render me bloodthirsty! I feel as if I wanted to set fire to the isle of Saint Louis! A torch! a firebrand!
"The toil were idle. Maurice, thy passion dire
Sufficient is Paris to set on fire."
Maurice smiled in spite of himself.
"You know," said he, "that it was agreed between us that we should speak only in prose."
"But you exasperate me with your folly," said Lorin. "Drink, Maurice, become a drunkard, do anything, study political economy; but for the love of Jupiter, let us fall in love with nothing but Liberty!"
"Or Reason?"
"Ah! that is true; by the way, the Goddess Reason talks much about you. She thinks you are a charming mortal."