And poor Emile, crushed by grief, laid his face on the grass on which he was lying and watered it with burning tears.
"Emile," said Monsieur de Boisguilbault, "you can neither hate your father nor be false to your mistress. Tell me, do you set much store by the truth? Can you lie?"
The marquis had touched the right spot. Emile sprang to his feet impetuously.
"No, monsieur, no," he said, "you know that I cannot lie. And of what use is falsehood to cowards? What happiness, what repose can it assure them? If I swear to my father that I have changed my religion, that I believe in ignorance, error, injustice, folly, that I hate God in man, and that I despise man in myself, will some monstrous miracle take place in me? shall I be convinced? shall I find myself suddenly transformed into a placid and supercilious egotist?"
"Perhaps so, Emile! in evil it is only the first step that costs, and whoever has deceived other men, reaches the point where he is able to deceive himself. That has happened often enough to be credible."
"In that case, falsehood to the winds! for I feel that I am a man and I cannot transform myself into a brute of my own free will. My father, with all his craft and all his strength, is blind in this. He believes what he tries to make me believe, and if he should be urged to make my belief his own he could not do it. No interest, no passion could force him to do it, and yet he fancies that he would not despise me on the day that I debased myself so far as to do a dastardly thing of which he knows that he is himself incapable! Does he feel that he must despise me and ruin me in order to confirm himself in his inhuman theories?"
"Do not accuse him of such perversity; he is the man of his epoch—what do I say? he is the man of all epochs. Fanaticism does not reason, and your father is a fanatic; he still burns and tortures heretics, believing that he is doing honor to the truth. Is the priest who comes to us at our last hour and says; 'Believe or you will be damned!' much wiser or more humane? Does not the powerful man who says to the poor clerk or the unfortunate artist; 'Serve me and I will make your fortune,' believe that he is doing him a favor, conferring a benefit on him?"
"But that is corruption!" cried Emile.
"Very good!" rejoined the marquis; "by what means is the world governed to-day, pray tell me? Upon what does the social structure rest? One must needs be very strong, Emile, to protest against it; for when you do, you must make up your mind to be sacrificed."
"Ah! if I were the only victim of my sacrifice," said the young man sorrowfully; "but she! poor, saint-like creature, must she be sacrificed too?"