"And you have sworn?"
"Alas! yes, madame; I feared so much to be disfigured by La Chouette, or to be drowned in a cellar; that appeared to me so frightful. Any other kind of death would nave appeared less fearful. I should not, perhaps, have endeavored to escape."
"What a gloomy idea at your age!" said Madame d'Harville, looking at La Goualeuse with surprise. "Once away from this place, returned to your benefactors, will you not be very happy? Has not your repentance effaced the past?"
"Can the past be effaced? Can the past be forgotten? Can repentance destroy the memory, madame?" cried Fleur-de-Marie, in a tone so despairing that Clemence shuddered.
"But all faults can be redeemed, unhappy child!"
"But the recollection of the stain—madame, does it not become more and more terrible in measure as the mind is purified, as the soul becomes elevated? Alas! the more you mount the deeper appears the abyss from which you have emerged."
"Then you renounce all hope of re-establishment and pardon?"
"On the part of others—no, madame; your goodness proves that indulgence is never wanting to the penitent."
"You will, then, be the only one without pity toward yourself?"
"Others may be ignorant, may pardon and forget what I have been. I, madame, never can forget."'