"Poor Pierre!" said Clotilde, "what an excellent fellow. But no, really!"
Then he made her smile by telling her what mortal terror and apprehension had taken possession of his soul at the moment when he was asking her to decide upon his fate; she had seemed too him, more than ever, at that moment, a lovely and sainted creature, and so much above him, that his pretension of being loved by her, of becoming her husband, had suddenly appeared to him as a pretension almost sacrilegious.
"Oh, mon Dieu!" she said, "what an opinion have you formed of me, then? It's frightful! On the contrary, I thought myself too simple, too commonplace for you; I thought that you must be fond of romantic passions, of great adventures; you have somewhat the appearance of it, and even the reputation; and I am so far from being a woman of that kind!"
Upon that slight invitation, he told her two events of his past life which had been full of trite excitement, and had afforded him nothing but disappointment and disgust. Never, however, before having met her, had the thought of marrying occurred to him; in the matter of love as in the matter of friendship, he had always had the imagination taken up with a certain ideal, somewhat romantic indeed, and he had feared never to find it in marriage. He might have looked for it elsewhere, in great adventures, as she said; but he loved order and dignity in life, and he had the misfortune of being unable to live at war with his own conscience. Such had been his agitated youth.
"You ask me," he went on with effusion, "why I love you. I love you because you alone have succeeded in harmonizing within my heart two sentiments which had hitherto struggled for its mastery at the cost of fearful anguish; honor and passion. Never before knowing you had I yielded to one of these sentiments without being made wretched by the other. They always seemed, irreconcilable to me. Never had I yielded to passion without remorse; never had I resisted it without regret. Whether weak or strong, I have always been unhappy and tortured. You alone made me understand that I could love at once with all the ardor and all the dignity of my soul; and I selected you because you are affectionate and you are sincere; because you are handsome and you are pure; because there are embodied in you both duty and rapture, love and respect, intoxication and peace. Such is the woman, such is the angel you are to me, Clotilde."
She listened to him half reclining, drinking in his words and manifesting in her eyes a sort of celestial surprise.
But it seems—who has not experienced it?—that human happiness cannot touch certain heights without drawing the lightning upon itself. Clotilde in the midst of her ecstasy shuddered suddenly and started to her feet. She had just heard a smothered cry, followed by the dull sound of a falling body. She ran, opened the door, and in the center of the adjoining room saw Julia stretched upon the floor.
She supposed that the child at the moment of entering the parlor had overheard some of their words, and then the thought of seeing her father's place occupied by another, striking her thus without warning, had stirred to its very depths that passionate young soul. Clotilde followed her into her room, where she had her carried, and expressed the wish of remaining alone with her. While lavishing upon her cares, caresses, and kisses, it was not without fearful anguish that she awaited her daughter's first glance. That glance fell upon her at first with vague uncertainty, then with a sort of wild stupor. The child pushed her away, gently; she was trying to collect her ideas, and as the expression of her thought grew firmer in her eyes, her mother could plainly read in them a violent strife of opposing feelings.
"I beg of you, I beseech you, my darling daughter," murmured Clotilde, whose tears fell drop by drop upon the pale visage of the child.
Suddenly Julia seized her by the neck, drew her down upon herself, and kissing her passionately: