“No, sir, no,” stammered Claire. “Ah!” she added, “you talk like the rest of the world, that prudent and egotistical world, which I despise and hate.”
“Poor child,” continued M. Daburon, pitiless even in his compassion, “unhappy young girl! This is your first deception! Nothing more terrible could be imagined; few women would know how to bear it. But you are young; you are brave; your life will not be ruined. Hereafter you will feel horrified at this crime. There is no wound, I know by experience, which time does not heal.”
Claire tried to grasp what the magistrate was saying, but his words reached her only as confused sounds, their meaning entirely escaped her.
“I do not understand you, sir,” she said. “What advice, then, do you give me?”
“The only advice that reason dictates, and that my affection for you can suggest, mademoiselle. I speak to you as a kind and devoted brother. I say to you: ‘Courage, Claire, resign yourself to the saddest, the greatest sacrifice which honour can ask of a young girl. Weep, yes, weep for your deceived love; but forget it. Pray heaven to help you do so. He whom you have loved is no longer worthy of you.’”
The magistrate stopped slightly frightened. Mademoiselle d’Arlange had become livid.
But though the body was weak, the soul still remained firm.
“You said, just now,” she murmured, “that he could only have committed this crime in a moment of distraction, in a fit of madness?”
“Yes, it is possible.”
“Then, sir, not knowing what he did, he can not be guilty.”