‘St. Roch has just chimed half-past seven,’ replied she calmly.
‘Open the window wider; there is a little air stirring.’
‘No; the evening is very still, but it will be fresher by and by.’
‘I shall not need it,’ said he, more faintly, though with perfect calm. ‘Before midnight, Constance—before midnight it will be the same to me if it breathed a zephyr or blew a gale: where I am going it will do neither.’
‘Oh, Citizen, can I not persuade you to see the Père Dulaque or the Curé of St. Roch? Your minutes are few here now, and I implore you not to waste them.’
‘’Tis so that I intend, my worthy friend,’ said he calmly. ‘Had either of these excellent men you mention made the voyage I am now going, I would speak to them willingly; but remember, Constance, it is a sea without a chart.’
‘Say not so in the face of that blessed Book——’
‘Nay, nay, do not disturb my few moments of calm. How sweet those flowers are! How balmy that little air that now stirs the leaves! Oh, what a fair world it is, or rather it might be! Do not sigh so heavily, Constance; remember what I told you yesterday; our belief is like our loyalty—it is independent of us.’
‘Let some holy man at least speak to you.’
‘Why should I shock his honest faith? Why should he disturb my peace. Know, woman,’ added he, more energetically, ‘that I have striven harder to attain this same faith than ever you have done to resist a heresy. I needed it a thousand times more than you; I ‘d have done more to gain it—clung closer to it when won too.’