Pierre looked at her in evident anger, the wrathful disguise of tortured love. His reason was hampered in its action. He was unable to exercise any discriminating faculty. There was something pathetic in his insistence, for he plainly perceived that his importunities were unavailing. His desire for sympathy was so urgent and all occupying that he could not thrust it aside. The proud, untamable creature, so arch, so kind, so generous, with her whims and caprices and beauty, alive with spirit and energy, seemed to him the embodiment of all he had renounced. Had he only the power to mould her into an entirely different form, to convert her into a bloodless personification of sanctity, he was convinced that he would be saving her soul.
“Diane,”—he could not control the quivering of his voice—“Diane, the Holy Virgin will transform into angels all those who have the happiness to abandon the cares of this life. Will you not drink of the living and abounding waters of grace which have flowed so benignly over this land of New France? Misfortune is about to fall upon this household, how or when I have no power to tell, but it is sorrow and death; when I would pray, a dark presentiment weighs my spirit to the earth—there is no escape from it. Diane,” he cried with yearning entreaty, “though you have cast in your lot with the world, the robe of God’s saints awaits you; but that means suffering deep and terrible, the crucifixion of what is dearest. In my dreams you are ever present, but always among the holy ones, crowned with the exceeding glory of the martyrs worn only by those who have reached the fairest ideal of heaven’s attainment, who have risen above all earthly joys and affections.”
Diane was confused and awed, and withal much annoyed, at this address. It did not touch her as it might have done a woman of wider experience. She had a just faith in her own instincts, and was possessed of all the happy confidence of youth. What had she to do with suffering and misery? she, Diane de Monesthrol, surrounded by affection, to whom the plant of life was daily blossoming out into fuller perfection, the happiest girl in all the colony of New France.
“Oh! listen then, cousin, to the tumult in the street.” Diane was delighted at the diversion. “Is it the voyageurs? nay, but it is the gentlemen.”
“Vive Henri Quatre,
Vive le Roi Vaillant,
Ce diable á quatre
A le triple talent
De boire and de battre
Et d’être un vert galant.”