"Ah!" said he in a low voice, "if I could only be her friend, it would not be a bad preface to the part of lover."
"Friend—oh, never!" replied Gabrielle, who had overheard these words: "Merodé can never be the friend of a virtuous woman."
Merodé seemed to be stung by her words; but he laughed, while her eyes filled with tears.
"Upon my soul, girl, you will weary me by this incessant resistance. You are just like Clelia or Cleopatra, who did not give their lovers so much as the smallest kiss, sometimes for six years."
"Dear Ernestine—if you knew all I suffer here!" said Gabrielle, bursting as usual into a passionate fit of weeping.
"Oh, do not talk of Ernestine!" said Merodé, rather coarsely, for the wine he had just imbibed was loosening his tongue, while it clouded his faculties. "I do not see why you should have such a horror of following my regiment in a gilded caleche drawn by six white horses, when she follows the bare legs of the Scottish musketeers in a caleche drawn by two brown Holsteiners."
"Wretch—silence!" said Gabrielle, crossing to the opposite window, and seating herself.
"Wretch—silence? here is a specimen of such good manners as we learn in Vienna!" said Merodé, following and leaning on the back of her chair. He continued to say a hundred fine things, with which the fluency of the time, his own ready invention, and impulsive nature supplied him. For more than an hour he continued to talk thus; and for that hour Gabrielle did nothing but weep and sob—sob and weep—without replying, till her eyes became inflamed, her face pale, her head ached, and her heart grew sick.
"Ah! tell me, my pretty Gabrielle, why am I so repugnant to you? 'Pon my honour, one would almost imagine I was a veritable ogre! Now, for the last time, I conjure you to tell me, if I have any hopes of living, or if I must blow out my brains? Speak—this silence—this grief—this apathy, overwhelm me with sorrow. Ah, what an unhappy rascal I am!"
Still there was no reply given.