"No," Valentine answered coldly. "Did I not keep my promise? Ah, Louis, since you insist on it, by heavens!" he added, growing animated in his turn, "let us reckon up accounts. I ask nothing better. What do you mean by talking to me of fulfilling an agreement? Have I not fulfilled my engagements? Did I not find for you that woman you despaired of ever seeing again? Did you not marry her? Did you not enjoy with her ten years of perfect happiness? By what right do you complain of the fatality that pursues you? By what right do you curse your destiny, ungrateful man! Whose happiness lasted ten years—ten ages in this earth? Look around you. Show me a man who, throughout his whole life, can reckon one year of that happiness you rail at, and then I will pity you, will weep with you, and, if it must be, help you to die. Oh! All men are the same—weak in the presence of joy as in grief, forgetting, in a few hours of adversity, years of happiness. And so, after fifteen years, you have returned to the same point. Insensate! Do you know, you who speak in that way, what it is to pass a whole existence of suffering and horrible agony: to feel hour by hour, minute by minute, your heart lacerated, and that without hope, and yet smile and seem gay—in a word, live? Have you for a single day endured that atrocious suffering, you who speak so deliberately about dying?"
Gradually, while speaking, Valentine had grown animated, his features were contracted, and his eyes flashed flames. Louis gazed on his friend without comprehending him, but startled at the state of exaltation in which he saw him.
"Valentine," he exclaimed, "Valentine, in heaven's name, calm yourself!"
"Ah!" the hunter continued, with a ghastly laugh, "you suffer, you say—you are unhappy; and yet listen. That woman you loved, whom I found for you again, whom I enabled you to marry—well, it was not love I felt for her, but idolatry. To be able to tell her so I would joyfully have parted with my blood drop by drop; and yet I, to whom you have just told your grief, I placed you in each other's arms. I smiled—do you understand me?—smiled on your love, and without a murmur, a word, to reveal that passion which gnawed my heart, I fled into the desert, alone with my love. Face to face with it I suffered for fifteen years. Oh, my God, my God! The wound is as painful now as on the first day. Tell me, Louis, now that you know all—for we are frank with each other—what are your sufferings compared with mine? By what right would you die?"
"Oh, pardon me, pardon me, Valentine!" Louis exclaimed, as he rushed into his arms. "Oh! You are right; I am very ungrateful to you."
"No," Valentine answered sadly, as he returned his embrace; "no, Louis, you are a man; you have followed the common law. I cannot and ought not to be angry with you. Pardon me, on the contrary, for allowing myself to be carried away so far as to reveal to you the secret which I had sworn to bury eternally in my heart. Alas! We have all our cross to bear in this world, and mine has been rude. God doubtlessly decreed it so, because I am strong," he added, with an attempt at a smile. "But, to return to yourself, it is true that youth has fled far from us, with its gay perspective and smiling illusions; life has no longer anything to offer us, save the painful trials of a ripe age. I am as wearied of existence as yourself; it weighs equally on me as on you. You see, my friend, I am fully of your opinion. I will not only not prevent you from dying, but I wish to accomplish my promise fully by accompanying you into the tomb."
"You, Valentine! O no! It is impossible."
"Why so? Is not our position the same? Have we not both suffered equally? An implacable creditor, you have asked me to honour my signature. Very good; but on one condition."
Louis was too well acquainted with his foster brother's firm and resolute character to try and combat his will.
"What is it?" he asked simply.