"Oh! never, never; do you forget?"
"I forget nothing; but if to-morrow you enter the convent, riot only I lose you forever, but you quit me for a life of tears and austerity. Oh! to lose you! to lose you! Let me at least know that you are happy, and married to the man you love and who adores you."
"Married to him! Me, dear father!"
"Yes; but on condition that, immediately after your marriage, contracted here at night, without other witnesses than Murphy for you and Baron Graun for Henry, you shall both go to some tranquil retreat in Switzerland or Italy, to live unknown as wealthy citizens. Now, my beloved daughter, do you know why I resign myself to a separation from you? Do you know why I desire Henry to quit his title when he is out of Germany. It is because I am sure that, in the midst of a solitary happiness, concentrated in an existence deprived of all display, little by little you will forget this odious past, which is especially painful to you because it forms such a bitter contrast to the ceremonious homage with which you are constantly surrounded."
"Rudolph is right," cried Clémence: "alone with Henry, continually happy with his happiness and your own, you will no longer have time to think, my dear child, of your former sorrows."
"Then, as it will be impossible for me to be long without seeing you, every year Clémence and I will go to visit you."
"And some day, when the wound of which you suffer, poor little angel, shall be healed, when you shall have found forgetfulness in happiness, and this moment will come sooner than you think, you will return to us, never to leave us."
"Forgetfulness in happiness," murmured Fleur-de-Marie, who, in spite of herself, was soothed by this enchanting vision.
"Yes, yes, my child," replied Clémence, "when at every moment of the day you see yourself blessed, respected, adored by the husband of your choice, by the man whose noble and generous heart your father has extolled to you a thousand times, shall you have leisure to think of the past, and even if you should think of it, why should the past sadden you? why should it prevent you from believing in the radiant felicity of your husband?"
"Finally it is true, for tell me, my child," replied Rudolph, who could scarcely restrain his tears at seeing that his daughter hesitated, "adored by your husband, when you shall have the knowledge and the proof of the happiness which he owes to you, what reproaches can you make yourself?"