"To avoid her."
"What! Have you not yet seen her? Not heard of her? She is more beautiful than ever and still unmarried. She waits for you."
"She waits in vain! Even in prayer, I do not venture to approach her. I am what I have become—a rigid, unfeeling monk. Only in my hands do I carry the rose-wreath, not on my brow. Its fragrance is no more sweet; its thorns give no more pain."
"And you are the one the Jesuit convent selected to send to me!"
"The rest were all afraid of you."
"On account of my bad reputation; and yet they do not know me at all. You had most cause to fear, for you know me, and yet you came—to the woman whom you hate, whom you despise, at whose warm whisper you shudder, whom you have so often thrust aside, and of whom you know that she clings to you so madly that she will never give you up to God, or Devil, or angel! Whose windows are written all over with your name, who when she is silent, and when she speaks, and when she dreams, thinks only of you! And yet you came!"
"The command was given and I obeyed."
"And why are you here?"
"To fulfil a sacred mission."
"Ha, ha! What mission?"