'And our Louise,' Marc resumed, 'are you satisfied with her?'
'Yes: she does not comply with my desires; you have remained the master of her mind; but she is well behaved, she studies, and I do not complain of her.'
Silence fell again, embarrassment once more stayed their tongues. That allusion to their daughter's first Communion, and the terrible quarrel which had parted them, had been sufficient. Yet the virulence of that quarrel was necessarily abating day by day, the girl herself having assumed all responsibility by her quiet resolve to await her twentieth year before making any formal confession of religious faith. In her gentle way she had exhausted her mother's resolution; and indeed a gesture of lassitude had escaped the latter when speaking of her, as if she had referred to some long-desired happiness, all hope of which had fled. A few moments went by, and then Marc gently ventured to put another question to her: 'And you, my friend, you have been so ill: how are you now?'
She shrugged her shoulders in a hopeless way, and was again obliged to force back her tears. 'I? Oh, I have long ceased to know how I am! But no matter, I resign myself to live since God gives me the strength to do so.'
So great was Marc's distress, so deeply was his whole being stirred by a quiver of loving compassion at the sight of such great suffering, that a cry of intense anxiety sprang from his lips: 'Geneviève, my Geneviève, what ails you? what is your torment? Tell me! Ah, if I could only console you, and cure you!'
Thus speaking, he came nearer to her on the bench, near enough indeed to touch the folds of her gown, but she hastily drew back. 'No, no, we have nothing more in common,' she exclaimed. 'You can no longer do anything for me, my friend, for we belong to different worlds.... Ah! if I were to tell you! But of what use would it be? You would not understand me!'
Nevertheless, she went on speaking; and in short and feverish sentences, never noticing that she was confessing herself, she told him of her torture, her daily increasing anguish, for she had reached one of those distressful hours when the heart instinctively opens and overflows. She related how, unknown to Madame Duparque, she had escaped that afternoon from Maillebois, in order to speak with a famous missionary, Father Athanase, whose pious counsels were at that time revolutionising the pious folk of Beaumont. The missionary was merely sojourning there for a short time, but it was said that he had already worked some marvellous cures—a blessing, a prayer, from his lips having restored angelic calmness to the unappeasable souls of women who were racked by their yearning for Jesus. And Geneviève had just left the neighbouring cathedral, where for two hours she had remained in prayer, after confessing to that holy man her unquenchable thirst for divine happiness. But he had merely absolved her for what he called excess of pride and human passion, and by way of penitence had told her to occupy her mind with humble duties, such as the care of the poor and the sick. In vain afterwards had she striven to humble, annihilate herself, in the darkest, the loneliest chapel of St. Maxence; she had not found peace, she had not satisfied her hunger; she still glowed with the same craving—a return for the gift of her whole being to the Deity, that gift which she had tendered again and again, though never once had it brought real peace and happiness to her flesh and her heart.
As Marc listened to what she said, he began to suspect the truth, and whatever might be his sadness at seeing his Geneviève so wretched, a quiver of hope arose within him. Plainly enough, neither Abbé Quandieu nor even Father Théodose had satisfied the intense need of love that existed in her nature. She had known love, and she must still love the man, the husband, whom she had quitted, and who adored her. Mere mystical delights had left her unsatisfied and irritated. She was now but the proud, stubborn daughter of Catholicism, who turns desperately to harsher and more frantic religious practices, as to stronger stupefacients, in order to numb the bitterness and rebellion induced by increasing disillusion. Everything pointed to it: the revival of motherliness in her nature, for she had taken little Clément back, and busied herself with him, and she even found some consolation in Louise, who exercised a gentle healing influence over her, leading her back a little more each day towards the father, the husband. Then, also, there were her dissensions with her terrible grandmother, and her dawning dislike for the little house on the Place des Capucins, where she at last felt she could no longer live, for its coldness, silence, and gloom were deathly. And, after failing with Abbé Quandieu and Father Théodose, her sufferings had led her to make a supreme attempt with that powerful missionary, to whom she had transferred her faith, that miracle-working confessor, whom she had hastened to consult in secret for fear lest she might be prevented, and who, by way of relief, had only been able to prescribe practices which, in the circumstances, were childish.
'But, my Geneviève,' Marc cried again, carried away, losing all thought of prudence, 'if you are thus beset, thus tortured, it is because you lack our home! You are too unhappy: come back, come back, I entreat you!'
Her pride bristled up, however, and she answered: 'No, no, I shall never go back to you. I am not unhappy: it is untrue. I am punished for having loved you, for having been part of you, for having had a share in your crime. Grandmother does right to remind me of it when I am so weak as to complain. I expiate your sin, God strikes me to punish you, and it is your poison which burns me beyond hope of relief.'