A strong throb of anger came into my throat. Figure to yourself that I looked at my wife with anger, with the same feeling which had moved me when the deserters left us; but far more hot and sharp. I seized her soft hands and crushed them in mine. ‘You would leave me!’ I said. ‘You would desert your husband. You would go over to our enemies!’
‘O Martin, say not so,’ she cried, with tears. ‘Not enemies. There is our little Marie, and my mother, who died when I was born.’
‘You love these dead tyrants. Yes,’ I said, ‘you love them best. You will go to—the majority, to the strongest. Do not speak to me! Because your God is on their side, you will forsake us too.’
Then she threw herself upon me and encircled me with her arms. The touch of them stilled my passion; but yet I held her, clutching her gown, so terrible a fear came over me that she would go and come back no more.
‘Forsake thee!’ she breathed out over me with a moan. Then, putting her cool cheek to mine, which burned, ‘But I would die for thee, Martin.’
‘Silence, my wife: that is what you shall not do,’ I cried, beside myself. I rose up; I put her away from me. That is, I know it, what has been done. Their God does this, they do not hesitate to say—takes from you what you love best, to make you better—you! and they ask you to love Him when He has thus despoiled you! ‘Go home, Agnès,’ I said, hoarse with terror. ‘Let us face them as we may; you shall not go among them, or put thyself in peril. Die for me! Mon Dieu! and what then, what should I do then? Turn your face from them; turn from them; go! go! and let me not see thee here again.’
My wife did not understand the terror that seized me. She obeyed me, as she always does, but, with the tears falling from her white cheeks, fixed upon me the most piteous look. ‘Mon ami,’ she said, ‘you are disturbed, you are not in possession of yourself; this cannot be what you mean.’
‘Let me not see thee here again!’ I cried. ‘Would you make me mad in the midst of my trouble? No! I will not have you look that way. Go home! go home!’ Then I took her into my arms and wept, though I am not a man given to tears. ‘Oh! my Agnès,’ I said, ‘give me thy counsel. What you tell me I will do; but rather than risk thee, I would live thus for ever, and defy them.’
She put her hand upon my lips. ‘I will not ask this again,’ she said, bowing her head; ‘but defy them—why should you defy them? Have they come for nothing? Was Semur a city of the saints? They have come to convert our people, Martin—thee too, and the rest. If you will submit your hearts, they will open the gates, they will go back to their sacred homes and we to ours. This has been borne in upon me sleeping and waking; and it seemed to me that if I could but go, and say, “Oh! my fathers, oh! my brothers, they submit,” all would be well. For I do not fear them, Martin. Would they harm me that love us? I would but give our Marie one kiss——’
‘You are a traitor!’ I said. ‘You would steal yourself from me, and do me the worst wrong of all——’