Madame de l’Estorade made a gesture of denial, but the confessor went on:—
“I know that idea provokes you; you can’t very well admit to me what you have studiously denied to yourself. But what is, is. We don’t say of a man, ‘A sort of magnetism issues from him, one feels his eye without meeting it’; we don’t cry out, ‘I am invulnerable on the side of love,’ without having had some prickings of it.”
“But so many things have happened since I wrote that nonsense.”
“True, he was only a sculptor then, and before long he may be a minister,—not like Monsieur de Rastignac, but like our great poet, Canalis.”
“I like sermons with definite deductions,” said Madame de l’Estorade, with a touch of impatience.
“That is what Vergniaud said to Robespierre on the 31st of May, and I reply, with Robespierre, Yes, I’ll draw my conclusion; and it is against your self-confidence as a woman, who, having reached the age of thirty-two without a suspicion of what love is, cannot admit that at this late date she may be subjected to the common law.”
“But what I want is a practical conclusion,” said Madame de l’Estorade, tapping her foot.
“My practical conclusion,—here it is,” replied Madame Octave. “If you will not persist in the folly of swimming against the current, I see no danger whatever in your being submerged. You are strong; you have principles and religion; you adore your children; you love Monsieur de l’Estorade, their father, in them. With all that ballast you cannot sink.”
“Well?” said Madame de l’Estorade, interrogatively.
“Well, there is no need to have recourse to violent measures, the success of which is very problematical. Remain as you are; build no barricades when no one attacks you. Don’t excite tempests of heart and conscience merely to pacify your conscience and quiet your heart, now ruffled only by a tiny breeze. No doubt between a man and a woman the sentiment of friendship does take something of the character ordinarily given to love; but such friendship is neither an impossible illusion nor is it a yawning gulf.”