—Do not envy me, Mademoiselle, for I carry away death in my soul. I am sorrowful as Christ at Golgotha. I spoke to you of ambition. It is false, I have no ambition. Other motives than miserable calculations compel me to depart.
—Motives … serious?
—You will understand them, Mademoiselle, for I must confess it to you, and that I should not do if I was to remain in this parish. But from the day I saw you, I have felt myself drawn towards you by an invincible sympathy. Oh, be not disturbed. Let not my words offend you; it is the fondness which I should have felt for a dearly-loved sister, if God had given me one. Believe it truly, Mademoiselle, the spotless calyx of the lily, the emblem of purity, is not more chaste than my thoughts when they fly towards you, for when I think of you, I think of the queen of angels; that is why I wished to see you again and bid you farewell.
—I thank you, sir.
—I wished to say to you: Farewell! I go away, but tell me, not if I may ask to see you sometimes again—I dare not ask so great a favour—but if I shall have the right to mingle my memory with yours, my thought with your thought; tell me if you wish me to remain your friend though far away. We leave one another, we separate, but is that a reason why all should end? May we not write, give one another advice, follow one another from afar on the arduous road of life?
It is so sweet, when we are alone, when the heart is sad, when the heaven is dark and the tears come slowly to the eyes, to dream that away there, in a little corner behind the horizon, there is a sister-soul to our soul, which perhaps, at that very moment, leaps towards us also and murmurs across space: "Friend, I think of you." We feel less abandoned and less alone.
—Yes, that is true, I understand you.
—It is the communion of souls, dear Suzanne, sweeter than all the pleasures of the body, because it is holy and pure, it is the Ark of the Covenant, the gate of Heaven. Tell me, will you? Are you willing that we should follow one another thus in life? You do not answer….
—Listen, sir, listen, there is someone in the road.
—There are footsteps, said Marcel, after he had listened. Yes, there are footsteps. Someone comes. I must not be seen here…. Farewell, Mademoiselle, farewell.