In my own room, fresh from my adventure, I asked myself indignantly whether I was to allow M. de Bévallan to carry on his double love affair uninterrupted, and to let him find a fiancée and a mistress in the same house. I am too much a man of my age and time to feel the Puritan's horror of certain weaknesses, and I am not hypocrite enough to affect what I do not feel. But I believe that the morality which is easiest and most indulgent in this respect, still demands some degree of dignity, self-respect, and delicacy. Even in these devious ways a man must walk straight to some extent. The real excuse of love is that it is love. But M. de Bévallan's catholic tendernesses exclude all possibility of self-forgetful passion. Such love-affairs are not even sins; they are something altogether lower in the moral scale; they are but the calculations and the wagers of brutalized horse-dealers.
The various incidents of this evening, combined to convince me, that this man was utterly unworthy of the hand and heart he dared to covet. Such a union would be monstrous. But I saw at once, that I should not be able to prevent it by using the weapons that chance had put into my hands. The best of objects does not justify base methods, and nothing can excuse the informer. This marriage will take place, and heaven will permit one of its noblest creatures to fall into the arms of a cold-hearted libertine. It will permit that profanation. Alas, it allows so many others!
I tried to imagine how this young girl could have chosen this man, by what process of false reasoning she had come to prefer him to all others. I think I have guessed. M. de Bévallan is very rich; he brings a fortune nearly equal to the one he acquires. That is a kind of guarantee; he could do without this additional wealth; he is assumed to be more disinterested than others, because he is better off.
How foolish an argument! What a terrible mistake to estimate people's venality by the amount of their wealth! In nine cases out of ten, opulence increases greed! The most self-seeking are not the poorest!
Was there, then, no hope that Marguerite would see the worthlessness of her choice, no hope that her own heart would give her the counsel I could not suggest? Might not a new, unlooked-for feeling arise in her heart, and, breathing on the vain resolutions of reason, destroy them? Was not this feeling already born, indeed, and had I not received irrefutable proofs of it? The strange caprices, the humiliations, struggles, and tears of which I had been so long the object, or the witness, proclaimed beyond doubt a reason that wavered, not mistress of itself. I had seen enough of life, to know that a scene like that of which chance had this evening made me the confidant, and almost the accomplice, does not, however spontaneous it may seem, occur in an atmosphere of indifference. Such emotions, such shocks, prove that there are two souls already shaken by the same storm, or about to be so shaken.
But if it were true, if she loved me, as too certainly I loved her, I might say of that love what she had said of her beauty: "What is the good of it?" For I could never hope that it would be strong enough to triumph over the eternal mistrust, which is at once the defect, and quality, of that noble girl. My character, I dare say it, resents the outrage of this mistrust; but my situation, more than that of any other, is calculated to rouse it. What miracle is to bridge the abyss between these suspicions, and the reserve they force upon me?
Finally, granting the miracle, if she offered me the hand for which I would give my life, but for which I will never ask, would our union be happy? Should I not have to fear, early or late, in this restless imagination, the slow awakening of a half-stifled mistrust? Could I, in the midst of wealth not mine, guard myself against misgivings? Could I really be happy in a love that is sullied by being a benefit as well? Our part as the protector of women is so strictly laid upon us by all sentiments of honour, that it cannot, even from the highest motives, be reversed for an instant without casting upon us some shadow of doubt and suspicion. Truly, wealth is not so great an advantage that we cannot find some counterpoise to it. I imagine that a man who brings his wife, in exchange for some bags of gold, a name that he has made illustrious, acknowledged worth, a great position, or the promise of a great future, does not feel that he is under a crushing obligation. But my hands are empty, my future is no better than my present; of all the advantages which the world worships I have only one—my title—and I am determined not to bear it, that it may not be said it was the price of a bargain. I should receive all and give nothing. A king may marry a shepherdess; that is generous and charming, and we congratulate him with good reason; but a shepherd who lets a queen marry him does not cut so fine a figure.
I have spent the night thinking these things over, and seeking a solution that I have not yet found. Perhaps I ought to leave this house and this place at once. Prudence counsels it. This business cannot end well. How often one minute of courage and firmness would spare us a lifetime of regret! I ought at least to be overwhelmed by sadness; I have never had such good reason for melancholy. But I cannot grieve. My brain, distracted and tortured, yet holds a thought which dominates everything, and fills me with more than mortal joy. My soul is as light as a bird of the air. I see—I shall always see—that little cemetery, that distant ocean, that vast horizon, and on that glowing hilltop, that angel of beauty bathed in divine tears! Still, I feel her hand under my lips, her tears in my eyes and in my heart. I love her! Well, to-morrow, if so it must be, I will decide. Till then, for God's sake, let me have a little rest. I have not been overdone with happiness. I may die of this love, but I will live in peace with it for one day at least.
August 26th.
That day, the single day I asked, has not been granted me. My brief weakness has not had long to wait for its punishment, which will be lasting. How could I have forgotten? Moral laws can no more be broken with impunity than physical, and their invariable action constitutes the permanent intervention of what we call Providence in the affairs of this world. A great, though weak man, writing the gospel of a sage with the hand of a quasi-maniac, said of the passions that were at once his misery, his reproach, and his glory: