"And so do I; but Robespierre is inaccessible to bribes, and so I have found his creatures. I fear that I must seek Madame Beauvais herself."
"But she probably hates you?"
"True: but she does not hate Pendarves; and if I convince her that her only chance of liberating him is by seeming to have ceased to love him, the business may be done."
"And must he owe his liberty, and perhaps his life, to her? But be it so, if he can be preserved no other way—in that case I would even be a suitor to her myself."
"That I could not bear. But oh! dear inconsiderate friend, why did you come hither?"
"Because I thought it my duty."
"And do you still think so?"
I was silent.
"Answer me: candid and generous Helen: do you not now see that it was more your duty to stay in your own safe country, protected by respectable friends, than to come hither courting danger, and the worst of dangers to a virtuous wife? Believe me, the passive virtue of painful but quiet endurance of injury was the virtue for you to practise. This quixotic daring looked like duty; but was not duty, Helen, and could only end in disappointment: for tell me, have you not found that you have thus suffered and thus dared for an ingrate?"
My silence answered the question.