“I have guessed rightly, then,” exclaimed Fouquet. “In truth, madame, I have never yet given you the right to insult me in this manner.”
“Insult you,” she said, turning pale, “what singular delicacy of feeling! You tell me you love me; in the name of that affection you wish me to sacrifice my reputation and my honor, yet, when I offer you money which is my own, you refuse me.”
“Madame, you are at liberty to preserve what you term your reputation and your honor. Permit me to preserve mine. Leave me to my ruin, leave me to sink beneath the weight of the hatreds which surround me, beneath the faults I have committed, beneath the load even, of my remorse, but, for Heaven’s sake, madame, do not overwhelm me with this last infliction.”
“A short time since, M. Fouquet, you were wanting in judgment; now you are wanting in feeling.”
Fouquet pressed his clenched hand upon his breast, heaving with emotion, saying: “Overwhelm me, madame for I have nothing to reply.”
“I offered you my friendship, M. Fouquet.”
“Yes, madame, and you limited yourself to that.”
“And what I am now doing is the act of a friend.”
“No doubt it is.”
“And you reject this mark of my friendship?”