“If you loved me,” he cried, “you could never, at this moment of separation, have the cruel courage to coldly reason and calculate. Ah, far different is my love for you. Without you the world is void; to lose you is to die. What have I to live for? Let the Rhone take back this worthless life, so miraculously saved; it is now a burden to me!”
And he rushed toward the river, determined to bury his sorrow beneath its waves; Valentine seized his arm, and held him back.
“Is this the way to show your love for me?” she asked.
Gaston was absolutely discouraged.
“What is the use of living?” he said, dejectedly. “What is left to me now?”
“God is left to us, Gaston; and in his hands lies our future.”
As a shipwrecked man seizes a rotten plank in his desperation, so Gaston eagerly caught at the word “future,” as a beacon in the gloomy darkness surrounding him.
“Your commands shall be obeyed,” he cried with enthusiasm. “Away with weakness! Yes, I will live, and struggle, and triumph. Mme. de la Verberie wants gold; well, she shall have it; in three years I will be rich, or I shall be dead.”
With clasped hands Valentine thanked Heaven for this sudden determination, which was more than she had dared hope for.
“But,” said Gaston, “before going away I wish to confide to you a sacred deposit.”