Or had they both been the puppets of Destiny, of blind Chance which at so tender an age had brought them together under the same roof, in an intimacy of daily intercourse, increased by the sadness of their cloistered existence, so that they had been the victims of their extreme youth, of the attraction they unconsciously exercised over each other, both carried away by the strong currents of life.
She, influenced by a train of incidents insignificant in themselves, rendered dangerous by repetition, details of every-day life which had gradually drawn her towards the young man, whose presence at last became a sweet necessity to her lonely existence.
He, suddenly stirred during the first few days of his residence in the Hôtel Rue des Lions; never for a moment thinking of the distance which separated him from the daughter of Monsieur de Pontivy. Think? How could he think, thrilling under the first revelation of love disclosed to him with the eloquence of Rousseau in la Nouvelle Héloïse, that romance of burning passion then in vogue? He had commenced to read the novel, by stealth, at Louis-le-Grand, and finished it in three nights of mad insomnia, in his little room on the third floor at the Hôtel de Pontivy. All the sap of his youth beat at his temples and throbbed in his veins at that flaming rhetoric; every phrase burned like kisses on his lips.
He recited portions aloud, learned them by heart, found them sublime in utterance. He yearned to repeat them to others, as one does music. And to whom could he repeat them but to Clarisse, placed there as if expressly to hear them? So he did repeat them to her. At all times and everywhere when alone with her. At the harpsichord, on long winter evenings, when the guests gravely and silently played at cards, and he turned the pages of her music. Out walking, when he met her, as if by chance, and spoke to her—while the eyes of Mademoiselle Jusseaume wandered absently from them—of Paris which she knew so little, the gay fêtes and gossip of the town, thus opening out to her endless vistas of happiness until then unknown, which involved promises of future joy.
He recited verses to her, pastorals, such as were then upon men's lips, mythologic madrigals made for rolling round a bonbon. She found them charming, and sought to learn them by heart. He copied them and gave them to her. This was a dangerous game. He became bolder, copied love-letters, then wrote them himself and compared them with Rousseau's. She read them, delighted at first, then trembling, and when she trembled it was too late.
She was unconsciously dragged into a world of fancy and illusion by the very strength of his youth and enthusiasm. His presence in that dull dwelling had seemed a ray of sunlight under which the bud of her young life had opened into flower. Thus, all unconscious of the poisonous mist that was more closely enveloping her from day to day, she found herself gliding insensibly down a steep declivity which gave way under her feet as she advanced, and before she could recover possession of her senses, or stay her quick descent to question whereto it led, she was undone!
"Every girl who reads this book is lost," Rousseau had written at the beginning of la Nouvelle Héloïse. And she had done far worse. Alone, given up to her own devices, just awakening to the mystery of existence, pure, innocent, and guileless, she had imbibed its insidious poison from the lips of one she had learned to love. And now she had fallen from these dizzy heights, dazed and crushed, lonelier than ever, for Monsieur de Pontivy had turned Robespierre out of the house soon after the fatal discovery.
The decision had been brief, in the character of a command:
"Of course, it is understood that what passed between us last night shall go no further," Monsieur de Pontivy had said to the young secretary, called to the Councillor's study at breakfast-time. "You can seek some pretext to treat me disrespectfully at table before the servants, and I shall beg you to leave my house."
The young man listened respectfully.