"What do you mean? My position was so difficult, so delicate. On another occasion I said nothing, but I was ever thinking of what concerned you. By contracting this marriage, which crowned all my desires, I also hoped to give another guarantee to your repose. I knew too well the excessive delicacy of your heart to hope that you could ever—ever cease to think of the past; but I said to myself, that if, by chance, your thoughts ever lingered there, you ought, feeling yourself cherished as a daughter by the noble woman who knew and loved you in the depth of your misfortunes—you ought, I say, to regard the past as sufficiently expiated for by your heavy miseries, and be indulgent, or rather just, toward yourself: for, indeed, my wife is entitled by her high qualities to the respect of all—is it not so? Ah, well, since you are to her a daughter, a cherished sister, ought you not to be encouraged? Is not her tender attachment an entire redemption? Does it not tell you that she knows, as I do, that you have been a victim—that you are not guilty—that others can, indeed, reproach you only with misfortune, that has overwhelmed you from your birth? Had you even committed great faults, would they not be a thousand times expiated, redeemed, by all the good you have done, by all that is excellent and adorable that has been developed in you?"
"My father—"
"Ah, let me—let me tell you all my thoughts, since an accident, for which indeed we ought to be grateful, has caused this conversation. For a long time I have desired, and at the same time dreaded it. God will that it may have a salutary result! It was mine to make you forget so many dreadful sorrows. I have a mission to fulfill towards you so august, so sacred, that I should have had the courage to sacrifice, for your repose, my love for Madame d'Harville—my friendship for Murphy, if I had thought their presence would have recalled to you too bitterly the past."
"On, my good father, could you think so? Their presence, the presence of those who know what I was, and who yet love me tenderly, does not it, on the contrary, personify forgetfulness and pardon? Indeed, my father, would not my whole life have been made desolate, had you renounced for me your marriage with Madame d'Harville?"
"Ah! I should not have been the only one to desire this sacrifice, if it would secure your happiness. You know not what self-denial Clémence has already voluntarily imposed upon herself, for she also comprehends all the extent of my duty to you."
"Your duty to me, my God! And what have I done to merit so much?"
"What have you done, poor dear angel! Until the moment you were restored to me, your life was only bitterness, misery, desolation; and for your past sufferings I reproach myself, as if I had caused them. And when I see you smiling, pleased, I believe myself pardoned; my only aim, my only wish, is to render you as entirely happy as you have been unfortunate; to raise you as much as you have been lowered, for it seems to me the last traces of the past are effaced when the most eminent, the most honorable persons pay you the respect which is due to you."
"Respect to me? no, no, my father; but to my rank, or, rather, to that you have given me."
"Ah! it is not your rank that is loved, that is revered—it is you, understand; indeed, my dear child, it is yourself, yourself alone. There is homage imposed by rank, but it is another imposed by powers of attraction and fascination! You know not how to distinguish between these, because you know not yourself; because you know not that, by a wonderful intelligence and tact, which renders me as proud as idolatrous of you, carry into all ceremonious intercourse, so new to you, a union of dignity, modesty, and grace, which is irresistible to the most stately characters."
"You love me so much, father, and all love you so much, that every one is sure of pleasing you by showing me deference."