“Savinien must be told that you refused eighty thousand francs a year and the dandy of Nemours,” he said aloud.
“Is it, then, a sacrifice?” she answered, laughing. “Are there sacrifices when one truly loves? Is it any merit to refuse the son of a man we all despise? Others may make virtues of their dislikes, but that ought not to be the morality of a girl brought up by a de Jordy, and the abbe, and my dear godfather,” she said, looking up at his portrait.
Bongrand took Ursula’s hand and kissed it.
“Do you know what Madame Minoret came about?” said the justice as soon as they were in the street.
“What?” asked the priest, looking at Bongrand with an air that seemed merely curious.
“She had some plan for restitution.”
“Then you think—” began the abbe.
“I don’t think, I know; I have the certainty—and see there!”
So saying, Bongrand pointed to Minoret, who was coming towards them on his way home.
“When I was a lawyer in the criminal courts,” continued Bongrand, “I naturally had many opportunities to study remorse; but I have never seen any to equal that of this man. What gives him that flaccidity, that pallor of the cheeks where the skin was once as tight as a drum and bursting with the good sound health of a man without a care? What has put those black circles round his eyes and dulled their rustic vivacity? Did you ever expect to see lines of care on that forehead? Who would have supposed that the brain of that colossus could be excited? The man has felt his heart! I am a judge of remorse, just as you are a judge of repentance, my dear abbe. That which I have hitherto observed has developed in men who were awaiting punishment, or enduring it to get quits with the world; they were either resigned, or breathing vengeance; but here is remorse without expiation, remorse pure and simple, fastening on its prey and rending him.”