"How unjust you are, Landri!" she exclaimed. It very rarely happened that she addressed him so, by his first name. That caress of language, the only kind that she had ever bestowed on him, and that so seldom, came to her lips in face of the young man's evident despair. A woman who loves can endure everything, conceal everything, except the compassion aroused by a sorrow which she has inflicted upon the man she loves; and, destroying, by that involuntary outburst of her passion, the whole effect of her previous refusal, she added: "I! indifferent to you! Why, of whom was I thinking when I spoke, if not of you, solely and only of you, of your future and your happiness?"
"How happy I should be," he interrupted, "if, on the other hand, you would think only of yourself, if you would have the selfishness of love, its exigences, its unreasonableness! And yet," he continued with the asperity of a passion which feels that it is reciprocated, despite all manner of resistance, and which is exasperated by that assurance, "it is true. You have some feeling for me in your heart. You are not a coquette. You would not make sport of a man who has shown you so plainly that he loves you, and how dearly! I said just now that you didn't love me. At certain times I believe it, and it tortures me. At other times I feel that you are so moved, so trembling—see, now!—Oh! by everything on earth that you hold sacred, Valentine,"—he had never before allowed himself that familiarity, which made her start like a kiss,—"if you really regard me with the feeling that I have for you, if my long fidelity has touched you, answer me. Is it true, really true, that between me and my happiness,—for you are my happiness, only you, I tell you,—between your heart and my heart there is nothing but that single, wretched obstacle, my name?"
"There is nothing else," she replied, "I swear."
"And you expect me to bow before that, to give you up because I am called Comte de Claviers-Grandchamp and you Madame Olier, and because my social circle will frown upon the marriage!"
"It is not I who expect it," she replied, "it is life!"
"Life?" he repeated in a voice that had suddenly become dull and harsh; "what do you mean by that? But what need have I to ask you? As if, ever since my youth, I had not seen that same barrier always standing in the path of all my impulses: my name, always my name, again my name! I shall end by cursing it! I am a grand seigneur, you say. Say rather a pariah, before whom so many avenues were closed, when he was twenty years old, because he is called by that great name; and the woman he loves won't have him because of it! Ah! how truly I shall have known and lived the tragedy of the noble,—since my evil fate decrees that I am a noble,—that paralysis of the youthful being, quivering with life, hungry for action, because of a past which was not his own, suffocation by prejudices which he does not even share.—Valentine, say that you do not love me. I shall be terribly unhappy, but I shall not feel what I felt just now, and with such violence,—a fresh outbreak of that old revolt through which I have suffered so keenly, which I have always fought within myself, and which goes so far, at times, as downright hatred of my caste. Yes, I have been, I am now sometimes, very near hating it, and that is so painful to me, for I belong to that caste, in spite of everything. It holds me a prisoner. I know its good qualities. I have its pride at certain moments, and at others, this one for instance, it is a perfect horror to me!"
"Do not speak so, do not feel so," pleaded Madame Olier. "You frighten me when I see you so unjust, not only to me,—I have forgiven you,—but to your own destiny. It is tempting God. You speak of barriers, of prison, of suffocation. For my part, I think of all the privileges you received at your birth, and first of all, and greatest of all, that of being so easily an example to others. If you could have heard the remarks that were made about you when you came to Saint-Mihiel, you would appreciate more justly the value of that name which you all but blasphemed just now—and for what reason? I heard those remarks, and I am still proud for you. 'He's the Comte de Claviers-Grandchamp, and he works! He'll have three hundred thousand francs a year and he passed his examinations brilliantly! He's a good fellow. He treats people well. He has all the qualities of a leader of men.'—You call nobles pariahs, because they arouse much envy. But when they are worthy of their rank, what influence they can exert! And all this is no longer of any account, because you can't bend to your will the will of a poor woman, who, in ten years, will be passée! And you will say of her then, if you recognize her: 'Where were my wits when I thought that I loved her so dearly?'"
"And if, ten years hence,—I still love her," said the young man, "and if I have employed those ten years in regretting her! Suppose it should happen that that woman's refusal were coincident with one of those crises as a result of which one's whole life is transformed? Suppose I had reached one of those times when a man has to make a decision of tragical importance to himself, and when he needs to know upon what support he can count?"
He seemed to hesitate, and then continued in the altered tone of one who, having just abandoned himself to the tumult of his emotions, puts constraint upon himself and resolves to confine himself to a formal statement of facts: "You will understand me in a moment. I came here with the idea of beginning with this. Your presence moved me too deeply! I have told you that I was able to obtain only a very short leave of absence, forty-eight hours, and that with difficulty. Our new colonel does not agree with you about nobles. He is strict and harsh with them. He made this remark about me the other day, because of my title and my 'de': 'I don't like names with currents of air.' Under the circumstances he was not wrong in requiring me to return to-morrow night. Within a few days, we know from official sources, there will be two church inventories made in the district. And they anticipate resistance."
"Is it possible?" cried Valentine, clasping her hands. "Since the law of separation was passed, I have never read about a scene like those at Paramé and Saint-Servan without trembling lest you should be caught in one of those cases of conscience of which so many gallant officers have been the victims! I thought that at Saint-Mihiel everything had passed off quietly and that the troops had not had to interfere. Besides, they so rarely use in that business the arm of the service to which you belong."