In spite of these avowals M. de Brévannes was not the more happy. Seductive persuasion, stratagems, promises, excitement, despair—all, all failed before the virtue of Bertha—virtue as pure and strong as her love itself.
Those who know the heart of man, and especially of men as proud and self-willed as M. de Brévannes, will understand the bitter resentment which sprung up in his mind against this young girl, as inflexible in her purity, as he in his corruption.
A man never pardons a woman who escapes by her address, instinct, or virtue, from the dishonouring snare which he has spread for her.
It would be impossible to describe the mental imprecations with which M. de Brévannes overwhelmed Bertha; and to such a pitch did he attain, that he actually believed that "by her calculating refusals, this chit of a girl had the impertinent hope that he—he would one day marry her,"—a most abominable machination, and, no doubt, planned with the old engraver.
M. de Brévannes shrugged his shoulders in pity when he reflected on a manœuvre as odious as it was ridiculous, and resolved to quit Paris. Before he went he had a final interview with Bertha. He fully expected a despairing scene; he found the young girl sad, calm, resigned. She had never given way to any illusion as to her love for M. de Brévannes, but had always anticipated the painful consequences of her ill-omened attachment.
It was, besides, singular that Pierre Raimond, a worthy artist,—austere, and even stoical, in his ideas of right and wrong,—should have educated his daughter in such ideas of wealth that the disproportion of fortune existing between M. de Brévannes and Bertha should seem to her as insurmountable as the distance which separates a king from a daughter of one of the lowest class in society.
Thus far from asking why he, being free, did not make her his wife—a simple and decided mode of reconciling love and duty—Bertha had ingenuously confessed to M. de Brévannes that their love was the more hopeless as Pierre Raimond, in his proud poverty, would never consent to marry his daughter to a rich man.
At the moment of her separation from M. de Brévannes, Bertha promised him to do all she could to forget him, in order to marry a man as poor as herself, and if not, she would never marry.
These words, free from any exaggeration, as simple and true as the poor girl that uttered them, made no impression on De Brévannes; who but saw in the angelic resignation of Bertha a flagrant and final proof of the plot that was laid for him in order to entrap him into a compulsory marriage.
M. de Brévannes set out for Dieppe, believing that he was completely freed from this love affair; and, proud of having escaped from a shameful snare, he awaited with irritating impatience for a humble prayer to return—which he had decided on receiving and treating with extreme contempt; but, to his vast surprise, he did not even hear from Bertha.