“You are going to leave Berlin to-day with your husband?” asked Marianne.
“We leave in an hour,” said Fanny, sighing.
Marianne had heard this sigh. “Do you love your husband?” she asked, hastily.
“I have seen him only twice,” whispered Fanny.
A sarcastic smile played on Marianne’s lips. “Then they have simply sold you to him like a slave-girl to a wealthy planter,” she said. “It was a mere bargain and sale, and still you boast of it, and pass your disgusting trade in human hearts for virtue, and believe you have a right to look proudly and contemptuously down upon those who refuse to be sold like goods, and who prefer to give away their love to being desecrated without love.”
“I do not boast of having married without love,” said Fanny, gently. “Oh, I should willingly give up wealth and splendor—I should be quite ready to live in poverty and obscurity with a man whom I loved.”
“But first the old rabbi would have to consecrate your union with such a man, I suppose?—otherwise you would not follow him, notwithstanding your love?” asked Marianne.
“Yes, Marianne, that would be indispensable,” said Fanny, gravely, firmly fixing her large eyes upon her friend. “No woman should defy the moral laws of the world, or if she does, she will always suffer for it. If I loved and could not possess the man of my choice, if I could not belong to him as his wedded wife, I should give him up. The grief would kill me, perhaps, but I should die with the consolation of having remained faithful to virtue—”
“And of having proved false to love!” exclaimed Marianne, scornfully. “Phrases! Nothing but phrases learned by heart, my child, but the world boasts of such phrases, and calls such sentiments moral! Oh, hush! hush! I know what you are going to say, and how you wish to admonish me. I heard very well how contemptuously your husband called me the mistress of the Prince von Reuss. Don’t excuse him, and don’t deny it, for I have heard it. I might reply to it what Madame de Balbi said the other day upon being upbraided with being the mistress of the Royal Prince d’Artois: ‘Le sang des princes ne souille pas!’ But I do not want to excuse myself; on the contrary, all of you shall some day apologize to me. For I tell you, Fanny, I am pursuing my own path and have a peculiar aim steadfastly in view. Oh, it is a great, a glorious aim. I want to see the whole world at my feet; all those ridiculous prejudices of birth, rank, and virtue shall bow to the Jewess, and the Jewess shall become the peer of the most distinguished representatives of society. See, Fanny, that is my plan and my aim, and it is yours too; we are only pursuing it in different ways—YOU, by the side of a man whose wife you are, and to whom you have pledged at the altar love and fidelity WITHOUT feeling them; I, by the side of a man whose friend I am—to whom, it is true, I have not pledged at the altar love and fidelity, but whom I shall faithfully love BECAUSE I have given my heart to him. Let God decide whose is the true morality. The world is on your side and condemns me, but some day I shall hurl back into its teeth all its contempt and scorn, and I shall compel it to bow most humbly to me.”
“And whosoever sees you in your proud, radiant beauty, must feel that you will succeed in accomplishing what you are going to undertake,” said Fanny, bending an admiring glance on the glorious creature by her side.