This time Pierre, still quivering, made a gesture of mingled rapture and terror, as if some divine and long-desired blessing were falling upon him from heaven and crushing him beneath its weight.
“Well, then,” he said, after a brief pause, “it is all over.... Let us kiss one another for the last time, and then I’ll go.”
“Go? Why? You must stay with us. Nothing could be more simple: you love Marie and she loves you. I give her to you.”
A loud cry came from Pierre, who wildly raised his hands again with a gesture of fright and rapture. “You give me Marie?” he replied. “You, who adore her, who have been waiting for her for months? No, no, it would overcome me, it would terrify me, as if you gave me your very heart after tearing it from your breast. No, no! I will not accept your sacrifice!”
“But as it is only gratitude and affection that Marie feels for me,” said Guillaume, “as it is you whom she really loves, am I to take a mean advantage of the engagements which she entered into unconsciously, and force her to a marriage when I know that she would never be wholly mine? Besides, I have made a mistake, it isn’t I who give her to you, she has already given herself, and I do not consider that I have any right to prevent her from doing so.”
“No, no! I will never accept, I will never bring such grief upon you... Kiss me, brother, and let me go.”
Thereupon Guillaume caught hold of Pierre and compelled him to sit down by his side on an old sofa near the window. And he began to scold him almost angrily while still retaining a smile, in which suffering and kindliness were blended. “Come,” said he, “we are surely not going to fight over it. You won’t force me to tie you up so as to keep you here? I know what I’m about. I thought it all over before I spoke to you. No doubt, I can’t tell you that it gladdens me. I thought at first that I was going to die; I should have liked to hide myself in the very depths of the earth. And then, well, it was necessary to be reasonable, and I understood that things had arranged themselves for the best, in their natural order.”
Pierre, unable to resist any further, had begun to weep with both hands raised to his face.
“Don’t grieve, brother, either for yourself or for me,” said Guillaume. “Do you remember the happy days we lately spent together at Neuilly after we had found one another again? All our old affection revived within us, and we remained for hours, hand in hand, recalling the past and loving one another. And what a terrible confession you made to me one night, the confession of your loss of faith, your torture, the void in which you were rolling! When I heard of it my one great wish was to cure you. I advised you to work, love, and believe in life, convinced as I was that life alone could restore you to peace and health.... And for that reason I afterwards brought you here. You fought against it, and it was I who forced you to come. I was so happy when I found that you again took an interest in life, and had once more become a man and a worker! I would have given some of my blood if necessary to complete your cure.... Well, it’s done now, I have given you all I had, since Marie herself has become necessary to you, and she alone can save you.”
Then as Pierre again attempted to protest, he resumed: “Don’t deny it. It is so true indeed, that if she does not complete the work I have begun, all my efforts will have been vain, you will fall back into your misery and negation, into all the torments of a spoilt life. She is necessary to you, I say. And do you think that I no longer know how to love you? Would you have me refuse you the very breath of life that will truly make you a man, after all my fervent wishes for your return to life? I have enough affection for you both to consent to your loving one another.... Besides, I repeat it, nature knows what she does. Instinct is a sure guide, it always tends to what is useful and trite. I should have been a sorry husband, and it is best that I should keep to my work as an old savant; whereas you are young and represent the future, all fruitful and happy life.”