“Nothing but misery and misfortune to me!” said she, bitterly; “nothing else,—nothing else!”
“You remind me, madam,” said he, in a slow, deliberate voice, as though he were enunciating some long-resolved sentiment,—“you remind me much of Josephine.”
“Who is Josephine?” asked she, quickly.
“I speak of the Empress Josephine, so you may perceive that I have sought your parallel in high places. She, like you, deemed herself the most unhappy of women, and all because destiny had linked her with a greatness that she could not measure.”
Though her vacant stare might have assured him either that she did not understand his words, or follow their meaning, never daunted, he went on.
“Yes, madam; and, like her husband, yours has had much to bear,—levity, frivolity, and—worse.”
“What are you here for? Why have you come after me?” cried she, wildly. “I swore to you before, and I swear it again, that I will never go back to you.”
“Whenever you reduce that pledge to writing, madam, call on me to be your security for its due performance; be it known to you, therefore, that this meeting was an unexpected happiness to me.”
She covered her face, and rocked to and fro like one in the throes of a deep suffering.
“I should be a glutton, madam, if I desired a repetition of such scenes as these; they filled eight years—eight mortal years—of a life not otherwise immemorable.”