"I wish what you wish, because we have reached the point where the sin still to be committed is the inevitable reparation of a succession of sins already committed. I have been culpable toward you, in not having had the selfish prudence to fly from you; it is better that I should be culpable toward myself by remaining your companion and your consolation, at the price of my peace of mind and my pride.—Listen," she added, grasping his hand with all the strength of which she was capable, "do not withdraw this hand, and, whatever happens, always retain enough honor and courage to remember that before being your mistress I was your friend. I said it to myself on the first day of your passion: we loved each other too well thus, not to love each other less well under other circumstances; but that happiness could not last for me, because you no longer share it, and pain has taken the upper hand in that liaison, in which for you pain and pleasure are mingled. I simply ask you, if you become weary of my love, as you become weary of my friendship, to remember that it is not an instant of frenzy that has driven me into your arms, but an impulse of my heart and a more loving and lasting sentiment than voluptuous intoxication. I am not superior to other women, and I do not assume the right to deem myself invulnerable; but I love you so ardently and so purely that I should never have transgressed with you, if you could have been saved by my strength. After I had believed that strength was beneficial to you, that it would teach you to discover your own strength and to purge yourself of an evil past, I found that you were convinced of the contrary, so convinced that to-day the contrary has actually happened: you are becoming bitter, and it seems that, if I resist, you are ready to hate me and to return to your life of debauchery, blaspheming even our poor friendship. And so I offer to God the sacrifice of my life for you. If I am destined to suffer because of your nature or your past, so be it. I shall be amply repaid if I rescue you from the suicide you were in a fair way to commit when I first knew you. If I do not succeed, I shall at least have made the trial, and God, who knows how sincere my devotion is, will pardon me if it is of no avail!"
In the early days of this union, Laurent's enthusiasm, gratitude, and faith were admirable to see. He rose superior to himself, he had outbursts of religious fervor, he blessed his dear mistress for having made known to him at last the true, chaste, and noble love of which he had dreamed so much, and of which he had thought that he was to be deprived forever by his own fault. She dipped him anew, he said, in the waters of his baptism, she wiped out even the memory of his evil days. It was adoration, worship, ecstatic contemplation.
Thérèse ingenuously believed in him. She abandoned herself to the joy of having caused all that happiness and restored all that grandeur of soul to one of God's elect. She forgot all her apprehensions, or smiled at them as meaningless dreams which she had mistaken for arguments. They laughed at them together; they reproached themselves for having misunderstood each other and for not having thrown themselves on each other's neck the very first day, they were so perfectly adapted to understand, appreciate, and cherish each other. There was no more talk of prudence, no more sermons. Thérèse had grown ten years younger. She was a child, more childish than Laurent himself; she devoted all her energies to the task of arranging his existence so that he would not feel the fold of a rose-leaf.
Poor Thérèse! Her intoxication did not last eight whole days.
Whence comes that terrible chastisement inflicted on those who have abused the forces of youth, a chastisement which consists in making them incapable of appreciating the joys of a harmonious and logical existence? Is the young man a very great criminal who, being launched in the world without a curb and with boundless aspirations, deems himself capable of exterminating all the phantoms that pass, of mastering all the pleasures that beckon to him? Is his sin anything else than ignorance, and could he have learned in his cradle that life should be a constant battle with one's self? There are some of these young men who are really to be pitied, and whom it is difficult to condemn, some who may have been without a guide, a careful mother, a judicious friend, a sincere first mistress. Vertigo has seized them at the outset; corruption has hurled itself upon them as upon its lawful prey, to make brutes of those who have more senses than heart, to make madmen of those who struggle, as Laurent did, between the mire of reality and the ideal of their dreams.
That is what Thérèse said to herself in order to keep on loving that suffering soul, and why she endured the outrages we are about to describe.
The seventh day of their happiness was irrevocably the last. That ill-fated figure was never absent from Thérèse's mind. Fortuitous circumstances combined to prolong that eternity of joy throughout a whole week; no one with whom she was intimate had come to see Thérèse, she had no work that was urgent; Laurent promised to set to work afresh as soon as he could resume possession of his studio, then in the hands of workmen who were making certain repairs. The heat in Paris was most oppressive; he proposed to Thérèse that they should pass forty-eight hours in the country, in the woods. It was the seventh day.
They set off by boat, and arrived at night-fall at a hotel. After dinner, they went out to ride in the forest in the lovely moonlight. They hired horses and a guide, who soon wearied them by his boastful loquacity. They had ridden about two leagues when they came to the foot of a cliff with which Laurent was familiar. He proposed to dismiss the horses and the guide, and to return on foot, even if it were a little late.
"I am sure," said Thérèse, "I don't know why we should not pass the whole night in the forest. There are no wolves or thieves here. Let us stay as long as you choose, and never go back, if you say so."
They were left alone; and thereupon a strange, almost impossible scene occurred, which we must describe just as it happened. They had climbed to the top of the cliff, and were sitting on the thick moss, which was burned and withered by the intense heat. Laurent was gazing at the magnificent spectacle of the sky, where the moon dimmed the brilliancy of the stars. Only two or three of the largest could be distinguished in the zenith. Laurent, lying on his back, gazed at them.