AUDACES FORTUNA JUVAT.
"If you have done wrong, rebuke yourself sharply:
If you have done well, have satisfaction."
SAINT FRANÇOIS DE SALLES (Traité de l'Amour Divin).
Marcel reached the parsonage without hindrance. Veronica had not yet returned. He congratulated himself on that, and went up the stair-case which led to his room with the light step of a happy man, locked his door, and began to laugh like a madman.
Everything was safe; only there was down there in a corner of the village, an honour lost.
—Is it really you, Marcel, is it really you, he said, who have just played so great a game, and won the trick?
And he laughed, and he rubbed his hands, and he would willingly have danced a wild saraband, if he had not been afraid of making a noise.
He listened in the next room where his uncle was in bed, and heard his loud breathing.
—And the hag who is watching still beneath the limes! And the father who is at Vic, and who, I doubt not, is snoring too. Come, all goes well! all goes well!
But he stopped, ashamed of himself.