Thus dismissed, M. de Clameran was obliged to take his leave without attaining his object.
“As you will, madame,” he said, “I leave you; but before doing so I must tell you the rest of my brother’s dying injunctions: ‘If Valentine disregards the past, and refuses to provide for our son, I enjoin it upon you to compel her to do her duty.’ Meditate upon these words, madame, for what I have sworn to do, upon my honor, shall be done!”
At last Mme. Fauvel was alone. She could give vent to her despair.
Exhausted at her efforts at self-restraint during the presence of Clameran, she felt weary and crushed in body and spirit.
She had scarcely strength to drag herself up to her chamber, and lock the door.
Now there was no room for doubt; her fears had become realities. She could fathom the abyss into which she was about to be hurled, and knew that in her fall she would drag her family with her.
God alone, in this hour of danger, could help her, could save her from destruction. She prayed.
“Oh, my God!” she cried, “punish me for my great sin, and I will evermore adore thy chastising hand! I have been a bad daughter, an unworthy mother, and a perfidious wife. Smite me, oh, God, and only me! In thy just anger spare the innocent, have pity upon my husband and my children!”
What were her twenty years of happiness compared to this hour of misery? A bitter remorse; nothing more. Ah, why did she listen to her mother? Why had she committed moral suicide?
Hope had fled; despair had come.