"And sometimes you wish to die?"
"Sometimes!" said La Goualeuse, smiling bitterly, "yes, madame, sometimes."
"Yet you feared to be disfigured by that horrible woman? you cling to your beauty, then, poor child? That announces that life has some charms for you. Courage, then—courage!"
"It is, perhaps, a weakness to think so; but if I were handsome, as you say, madame, I should wish to die handsome, in pronouncing the name of my benefactor."
The eyes of Madame d'Harville filled with tears.
Fleur-de-Marie had said these words so simply; her angelic features, pale and cast down, her mournful smile, were so much in unison with her words, that no one could doubt the reality of her gloomy desire. Madame d'Harville was endowed with too much sensibility not to feel what was fatal and inflexible in this thought of La Goualeuse- "I shall never forget what I have been" —a fixed, constant idea, which would predominate and torture the life of Fleur-de-Marie. Clemence, ashamed at having for a moment misunderstood the generosity, always so disinterested, of the prince, also regretted that she should have had for a moment a feeling of jealousy toward La Goualeuse, who had expressed, with so much warmth, her gratitude toward her protector. Strange thing—the admiration which this poor prisoner showed so vividly for Rudolph, augmented, perhaps, still more the profound love which Clemence was forever to conceal from him. She resumed, to drive away her thoughts: "I hope that, in future, you will be less severe toward yourself. But let us speak of your oath; now I can understand your silence. You did not wish to denounce the wretches?"
"Although the Schoolmaster took part in my abduction, he had twice defended me—I was afraid of being ungrateful toward him."
"And you lent yourself to the designs of these monsters?"
"Yes, madame, I was so much alarmed! La Chouette went to seek Bras-Rouge; he took me to the guard-house, saying he found me roving about his inn; I did not deny it; I was arrested, and brought here."
"But your friends at the farm must be very much alarmed."