“Ah! monsieur, my child will die!” cried Madame Sauviat, seeing the effect of the rector’s words on her daughter’s face. “How can her heart survive such emotions? Monsieur Grossetete has always hitherto prevented that man from seeing Veronique.”
Madame Graslin’s face was on fire.
“Do you hate him so much?” said the Abbe Bonnet.
“She left Limoges to escape the sight of him, and to escape letting the whole town into her secrets,” said Madame Sauviat, terrified at the change she saw on Madame Graslin’s features.
“Do you not see that he will poison my few remaining hours? When I ought to be thinking of heaven he will nail me to earth,” cried Veronique.
The rector took her arm and constrained her to walk aside with him. When they were alone he stopped and gave her one of those angelic looks with which he was able to calm the violent convulsions of the soul.
“If it is really so,” he said, “as your confessor, I order you to receive him, to be kind and affectionate to him, to quit that garment of wrath, and forgive him as God will forgive you. Can there still be the remains of passion of a soul I believed to be purified. Burn this last incense on the altar of your penitence, or else your repentance is a lie.”
“There was still that effort to make—and it is made,” she answered, wiping her eyes. “The devil lurked in that last fold of my heart, and God, no doubt, put into Monsieur de Grandville’s mind the thought that brings him here. Ah! how many times must God strike me?” she cried.
She stopped, as if to say a mental prayer; then she returned to Madame Sauviat and said in a low voice:
“My dear mother, be kind and gentle to Monsieur de Grandville.”