DURING MASS.
"I have my rights of love and portion of the sun;
Let us together flee …"
A. DE VIGNY (La Prison).
It will easily be credited that Marcel's thoughts had little in common with the Holy Eucharist. He would have been a very ungrateful lover, if his whole soul had not flown towards Suzanne. This was then his chief preoccupation, while he murmured the long Credo, partook of Christ, and recited his prayers.
What should he decide? that was his second. Should he go away? That meant fortune, reconciliation with the Bishop, putting his foot in the stirrup of honours. Young, intelligent, learned, what was there to stop him?
But that meant separation from Suzanne: saying farewell to all those divine delights which he had just tasted. He had hardly time to moisten his parched lips in the cup, before the cup was shattered. He was truly in love, for he should have said to himself: "There are other cups." But for him there was but one. Uncle Ridoux, the Bishop and greatness might go to the devil. The promised cure and the episcopal mitre might go to the devil too. Did he not possess the most precious of treasures, the most enviable blessing, the supplement and complement of everything, the ambition of every young man, the desire of every old man, of every man who has a heart: a young, lovely, modest, loving, intelligent and adored mistress. But what might not be the result of that love? What drama, what tragedy, and perhaps what ludicrous comedy, in which he, the priest, would play the odious and ridiculous character?
This love, which plunged him into an ocean of delights, would it not plunge him also into an abyss of misfortunes?
Could it proceed for long without being known and remarked?
Scandal, shame, and death perhaps, a terrible trinity, were they waiting not at his door?
For the viper which harboured at his hearth, had its piercing glassy eye fixed unweariedly on him; and how could he crush the viper?