"No," said the widow, "it is not because the man who for fifteen years has been my all in life will be to-morrow in his bed of earth; it is not because when I was a child I witnessed the massacres of Légé, and saw my dear ones killed beneath your banner, and felt their blood spattering my face; it is not because for ten whole years those who fought for your ancestors persecuted mine, burned their houses, ravaged their fields,--no, I repeat, it is not for that, nor all that, that I hate you."
"Then why is it?"
"Because it seems to me an impious thing that a family, a race, should claim the place of God, our only master here below,--the master of us all, such as we are, great and small; impious to declare that we are born the slaves of that family, to suppose that a people it has tortured have not the right to turn upon their bed of suffering unless they first obtain permission! You belong to that selfish family; you have come of that tyrant race. It is for that I hate you."
"And yet you have given me shelter; you have laid aside your grief to lavish care not only upon me, but also upon him who accompanies me. You have taken your own clothes to cover me; you have given him the clothes of your poor dead husband, for whom I pray here below, and who, I hope, will pray for me in heaven."
"All that will not hinder me, after you have once left my house, after I have fulfilled my duty of hospitality,--all that will not prevent me from praying ardently that those who are pursuing you may capture you."
"Then why not deliver me up to them, if such are really your feelings?"
"Because those feelings are less powerful than my respect for misfortune, my reverence for an oath, my worship of hospitality; because I have sworn that you shall be saved this day; and also because, perhaps, I hope that what you have seen here may be a lesson not wholly lost upon you,--a lesson that may disgust you with your projects. For you are humane; you are good. I see it!"
"What should make me renounce projects for which I have lived these eighteen months?"
"This!" said the widow.
And with a rapid, sudden movement, like all she made, she pulled away the sheet that covered the dead, disclosing the livid face and the ghastly wound surrounded by purple blotches.