“Then you will take Caliste!” she exclaimed; “you will take Caliste from Salency, will you not, uncle Dorsain?”
The good man looked annoyed as he replied, “My dear Victorine I love quiet; how could my wife and myself endure the haughty and proud airs of Caliste? No, Victorine, it was not Caliste I desired to adopt as a daughter.”
Victorine could not but understand the kind old gentleman’s words; she kissed his hand in token of her gratitude, and then with many thanks she tried with caution to make him comprehend her situation. “If it but depended upon myself,” she said, “oh, how happy would it make me to live so near Swisserland; so near my oldest and dearest friends; so near my first, my happiest home; so near my beloved aunt Pauline’s grave; but no, uncle Dorsain; no, I must not think
of it; I have a duty to perform here. I ought to comfort Caliste, and I only can, because she feels that the Rosiere is a younger sister to me, as well as to herself.”
D’Elsac could not be offended by such a refusal. “Victorine,” he said, “pray tell me upon what motive do you act?”
She smiled, though the tear still trembled on her eyelid, as she replied playfully, “By the same motive, uncle Dorsain, which you acknowledged just now. I too love peace. I love it dearly, but pardon me if I say that the peace after which I pursue is not of so transient a nature as yours. You seek but the peace of good nature and cheerful countenances. My peace is the peace of the heart; the peace that a young child feels upon its mother’s knee. My Heavenly Father’s arms I know are around me; they will, I feel assured, never be withdrawn; and whilst I do what He points out as right to be done, the peace and confidence of the loved child no earthly power can take from my mind. Dear uncle, Dorsain, I must not then accept your kind offer, for I must now give the comfort of sympathy to my sorrowing Caliste; and if I left her now, peace would be banished from
my mind, for I should be acting against my conscience, and that ever brings punishment in its rear.”
“When I hear you speak, my dear niece,” said Dorsain, “my conscience gives me many a pang for my unbrotherly conduct to that dear sister Pauline who performed the tender part of mother to you Victorine. Though a few miles, comparatively a few miles, separated us when I heard that my sister was a heretic, I at once determined to associate with her no more, and now that I have the will, the power is no longer mine to visit her.”
“Your estrangement was a great grief to my dear aunt,” replied Victorine, “and had not my uncle’s very bad health disabled him, he or my aunt would have forced upon you a visit; but he was too ill to leave home, and she had no one to take her place with him or with me, and before I was old enough to assist her he was no more, and circumstances were changed with us. She did, however, to the last, often talk of you, hoping you would meet, if not in this world, in the next.”
More was said upon this subject, and it was not till some time afterwards that the conversation was renewed, when D’Elsac said,