"No," said the Marchioness, "it is not probable. She does not wish to marry, and in her position she is greatly in the right."
"O, certainly," rejoined the Duke. "Marriage without fortune must be a hell!"
He looked at Caroline to see if she were moved by such a declaration. She was quite passive; she had renounced marriage sincerely and irrevocably.
The Duke, wishing to judge whether she was armed against the idea of an irreparable fault, added, in order to compromise nothing too gravely, "Yes, it must be a hell except in the case of a great passion which gives the heroism to undergo everything."
Caroline was still just as calm and apparently a stranger to the question.
"Ah! my son, what nonsense are you preaching now? There are days when you talk like a child."
"But you know well enough that I am very much of a child," said the Duke; "and I hope to be so for a long time to come."
"It is being altogether too much so to rest the chances of happiness in misery," said the Marchioness, who courted discussion. "There is no such thing; misery kills all, even love."
"Is that your opinion, Mlle de Saint-Geneix?" rejoined the Duke.
"O, I have no opinion on the subject," she replied. "I know nothing of life beyond a certain limit, but I should be led in this instance to believe with your mother rather than with you. I have known misery, and if I have suffered it was in seeing its weight upon those whom I loved. There is no need, therefore, of extending and complicating one's life when it is already so perplexing. That would be to go in search of despair."