The Minister's Wooing

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

‘No, no, mignonne, this is best. I want to lay my head in your lap;’ and she took off her riding-hat with its streaming plume, and tossed it carelessly from her, and laid her head down on Mary’s lap. ‘Now don’t call me Madame any more. Do you know,’ she said, raising her head with a sudden brightening of cheek and eye, ‘do you know that there are two me’s to this person?—one is Verginie, and the other is Madame de Frontignac. Everybody in Philadelphia knows Madame de Frontignac; she is very gay, very careless, very happy; she never has any serious hours, or any sad thoughts; she wears powder and diamonds, and dances all night, and never prays—that is Madame. But Verginie is quite another thing. She is tired of all this; tired of the balls and the dancing, and the diamonds, and the beaux; and she likes true people, and would like to live very quiet with somebody that she loved. She is very unhappy, and she prays too, sometimes, in a poor little way, like the birds in your nest out there, who don’t know much, but chipper and cry because they are hungry—this is your Verginie—Madame never comes here; never call me Madame.’

‘Dear Verginie,’ said Mary, ‘how I love you!’

‘Do you, Mary—bien sur? you are my good angel. I felt a good impulse from you when I first saw you, and have always been stronger to do right when I got one of your pretty little letters. Oh, Mary, darling! I have been very foolish and very miserable, and sometimes tempted to be very, very bad. Oh, sometimes I thought I would not care for God or anything else—it was very bad of me—but I was like a foolish little fly, caught in a spider’s net before he knows it.’

Mary’s eyes questioned her companion with an expression of eager sympathy, somewhat blended with curiosity.

‘I can’t make you understand me quite,’ said Madame de Frontignac, ‘unless I go back a good many years. You see, dear Mary, my dear angel mamma died when I was very little, and I was sent to be educated at the Sacré Cœur, in Paris. I was very happy and very good in those days—the sisters loved me, and I loved them, and I used to be so pious, and loved God dearly. When I took my first communion, Sister Agatha prepared me. She was a true saint, and is in heaven now; and I remember when I came to her, all dressed like a bride, with my white crown and white veil, that she looked at me so sadly, and said she hoped I would never love anybody better than God, and then I should be happy. I didn’t think much of those words then, but oh, I have since, many times. They used to tell me always that I had a husband who was away in the army, and who would come to marry me when I was seventeen, and that he would give me all sorts of beautiful things, and show me everything I wanted to see in the world, and that I must love and honour him.

‘Well, I was married at last, and Monsieur de Frontignac is a good, brave man, although he seemed to me very old and sober; but he was always kind to me, and gave me nobody knows how many sets of jewelry, and let me do everything I wanted to, and so I liked him very much; but I thought there was no danger I should love him, or anybody else better than God. I didn’t love anybody in those days, I only liked people, and some people more than others. All the men I saw professed to be lovers, and I liked to lead them about and see what foolish things I could make them do, because it pleased my vanity; but I laughed at the very idea of love.

‘Well, Mary, when we came to Philadelphia I heard everybody speaking of Colonel Burr—and what a fascinating man he was, and I thought it would be a pretty thing to have him in my train—and so I did all I could to charm him. I tried all my little arts—and if it is a sin for us women to do such things, I am sure I have been punished for it. Mary, he was stronger than I was. These men, they are not satisfied with having the whole earth under their feet, and having all the strength and all the glory, but they must even take away our poor little reign—it’s too bad.

‘I can’t tell you how it was. I didn’t know myself, but it seemed to me that he took my very life away from me; and it was all done before I knew it. He called himself my friend—my brother—he offered to teach me English—he read with me, and by-and-by he controlled my whole life. I that used to be so haughty, so proud—I that used to laugh to think how independent I was of everybody. I was entirely under his control, though I tried not to show it. I didn’t well know where I was, for he talked friendship, and I talked friendship; he talked about sympathetic natures that are made for each other, and I thought how beautiful it all was; it was living in a new world. Monsieur de Frontignac was as much charmed with him as I was; he often told me that he was his best friend; that he was his hero—his model man; and I thought, oh Mary, you would wonder to hear me say what I thought! I thought he was a Bayard, a Sully, a Montmorenci; everything grand and noble and good. I loved him with a religion. I would have died for him; I sometimes thought how I might lay down my life to save his, like women I read of in history. I did not know myself. I was astonished I could feel so; and I did not dream that this could be wrong. How could I, when it made me feel more religious than anything in my whole life? Everything in the world seemed to grow sacred. I thought if men could be so good and admirable, life was a holy thing, and not to be trifled with. But our good Abbé is a faithful shepherd, and when I told him these things in confession, he told me I was in great danger—danger of falling into mortal sin. Oh, Mary! it was as if the earth opened under me. He told me, too, that this noble man, this man so dear, was a heretic, and that if he died he would go to dreadful pains. Oh, Mary! I dare not tell you half what he told me; dreadful things that make me shiver when I think of them; and then he said that I must offer myself a sacrifice for him; that if I would put down all this love, and overcome it, that God would perhaps accept it as a satisfaction, and bring him into the true church at last.

‘Then I began to try. Oh, Mary! we never know how we love till we try to unlove; it seemed like taking my heart out of my breast, and separating life from life. How can one do it? I wish any one would tell me. The Abbé said I must do it by prayer; but it seemed to me prayer only made me think the more of him.

‘But at last I had a great shock; everything broke up like a great, grand, noble dream; and I waked out of it just as weak and wretched as one feels when one has overslept. Oh, Mary! I found I was mistaken in him—all, all, wholly!’