"I understand your thoughts, unhappy child! Let us drop those sad recollections!" And stamping the floor furiously Odelin added: "Oh, infamous Queen! Thou art the monster who debauched my child! A curse upon thee and thy execrable brood!" After a painful silence, Odelin proceeded abruptly: "Do! I conjure you! Let us never again return to the past. Let us endeavor to bury it in everlasting oblivion!"
"Alas, father, even if your clemency were to forget, my conscience will ever remember. It will every day remind me that I am a disgrace to my family. Oh, God! My cheeks tingle with shame at the bare thought of meeting my sister—and mother!"
"Your mother! You know not the depths of a mother's love, indulgence and compassion. You return to her soiled, but repentant, and your mother will forgive. Besides, you are not guilty—you are the victim of, not the accomplice in, your past life. Your heart has remained pure, your instincts honest and lofty; your tears, your remorse, your apprehensions prove it to me. No, no! Be not afraid. Your mother and sister will receive you with joy, with confidence. I am certain henceforth your life will be ours, pure, modest, industrious! Oh, I know it—it is only that that causes my heart to bleed, and my pity for you to redouble; you are never to experience the austere yet sweet joys of a wife—and a mother!"
Odelin remained for a moment steeped in silent rumination. After a pause he proceeded:
"It is the severe punishment for a sin that it is allowed to none but your own family to absolve you of. But your sister's children will be your own. Your brother also is to marry. Cornelia, his sweetheart, is worthy of our affection. You will silence the cravings of your own heart in loving their children as you would have done your own. They will also love you. You will spend your life near them and us. Come, take a father's word for it—the domestic hearth is an inexhaustible source of consolation for the sorrowful—an inexhaustible source of sweet joys and healthy pleasures."
These warm and affectionate words moved Anna Bell so profoundly that, dropping down upon her knees before her father, she covered his hands and face with kisses and tears; and raising her eyes up to him, and contemplating him with a kind of respectful admiration, "Oh, father!" she exclaimed, "living image of God! Your goodness and compassion are like only unto His!"
"Because you suffer, my poor child," replied Odelin, his eyes moist with tears. And raising his daughter from the floor and placing her beside him, he put his arm around her and covered her with renewed caresses.
"It is because you are to suffer still more—it is because you love—it is because you are bound to love—and without hope!" the armorer proceeded with solemnity. "Only this once, and never again shall I mention this painful love. If I, your father, touch upon such a subject with you, the reason is that it is impossible for me to blame the choice of your heart. Franz of Gerolstein, by the strength of his character, the generosity of his sentiments, the loftiness of his whole life, deserves to be loved passionately. Alas, but for that unhappy past, your love needed not be hopeless. Only a few hours ago, speaking about you at a halt made by our troops, Franz of Gerolstein remarked to me: 'Oh, that honor, the only barrier I may never leap, should separate me forever from your daughter!' It was not a hollow consolation the Prince was offering me. I know Franz's contempt for distinctions of rank. Moreover we are of the same blood, our family comes from one stock; but that fatal past—that is the unbridgeable abyss that separates us forever from the Prince. That is why you inspire me with so much pity. Yes, you are all the more endeared to me because you suffer, and by reason of your future sufferings, poor dear child, so guiltless of the sins you have committed!" added Odelin with renewed tenderness. "But be brave, be brave, my child! Your hopeless love is at least honorable and pure; you can nourish it without shame, in the secret recesses of your heart. I shall say not another word upon that ill-starred passion. When you are back among us and, although surrounded by our affection, I shall see you at times lost in revery, sad, and moist of eye, believe me, poor distressed soul, your father will sympathize with your grief; each tear you drop will fall upon my heart."
Odelin was uttering these last words when his son hurried into the apartment, looking sad and even bewildered. Anna Bell jumped up to meet the young man, saying: "Thank God, brother, I see you back safe and sound!"
Such was the preoccupation of Antonicq that, without answering his sister, without taking notice of her, and even gently pushing her aside, he approached his father, and taking him apart to the other end of the room, spoke to him in a low and excited voice. Painfully affected at seeing herself pushed out of the way by her brother, who seemed to have neither a word nor a look for her in response to the gladness that she expressed at his safe return from battle, the young girl imagined herself despised by him.