“One, I say, even a high lady, may profit by the example of simplicity. Do I not know, I—yes, very well—that Martha’s heart is engaged outside her duty? What then? She’s loyal to duty.”
“It is young Balmat, is it not? Wed her elsewhere; sell her clean body for a price—then come and tell me what she pays to duty. I was as good as Martha.”
He ignored her bitter words, urging his point across the interruption.
“Even a great thing for her, I’ll say, where duty is so tedious—just a little daily routine, the house, the kitchen, the conduct of small affairs. There might be compensation else in such a state—great compensation, even, where the life, the happiness, the salvation of many souls depended on one woman’s trust and example.”
She held him with her tragic eyes.
“There’s no salvation possible by way of me. Tell the Chevalier, Monsieur, if you speak for him, as I assume is your commission, to charge himself with all that duty—the lives, the title, the estates, the administration of them all—and leave me to give him thanks and die in peace. He’ll find full compensation for duty, I’m sure, in what duty has bequeathed him. Please will you go now, and take him that message?”
“Never—I say never, madama. This is a bad revolt—I am old, and I will say it. Is it, do you imagine in your perversity, to show honour to an honoured memory? If you think so, I will dare to say that I knew a noble heart better than you yourself, and I speak in its name when I mourn your refusal to take up your cross like a Christian, thanking God for having spared you the weight of an irreparable injury to its burden!”
She sat up, with glittering eyes. “You insult me,” she began, and burst into heart-rending tears.
He let the fit run out, before he spoke again gently.
“My old heart bleeds for your young tragedy. But, believe my word, by so much as I am nearer the grey shore which seems to you now so far, it is not measureless. If these thoughts were possible to your heart, the All-seeing was doubtless wise to forewarn it with a chastisement, which even yet was not the worst. Lower your head; come down from this false humility which only mocks at heaven. If your feet—for flesh is proud: who can know it better than I?—falter from the whole descent at once, make your first halt half-way with Martha and myself—live with us a little. I say at least for my own advantage; because, indeed, people would be sure to point at me for a self-interested politician, and that would hurt my honest fame. But come, I say—come down from these heights where your heart is locked in ice, and where the ghost of a dead wickedness holds it frozen with his frozen eyes, looking up through the dark window of his grave.”