The soft and soothing tones of Diane's voice flowed on, moving the young man's inmost soul, as if it were an instrument obedient to her words.
"And then, Gabriel, since fate forbids our being bound together by the ties of happy love, how can you have the heart to deny me the only communion of feeling which is permissible for us,—that of sorrow? Shall we not suffer less if we suffer together? Is it not, then, very sad to think that the only bond which can unite us still keeps us apart?"
Feeling that Gabriel, though half convinced, was still in doubt, she resumed,—
"Besides, you must beware! If you persist in your silence, why should I not adopt the same language with you which caused you so much terror and anguish just now,—why, I know not,—but which you yourself, after all, long ago taught my lips and my heart? Surely your betrothed has the right to tell you over and over again that she loves you, and none but you. Your promised wife in God's sight may surely, with a chaste caress, put her head upon your shoulder and her lips to your forehead thus—"
But Gabriel, with a sinking heart, again put Diane aside, with a shudder.
"No!" he cried, "have pity on my reason, Diane, I implore you. So you really wish to know the terrible secret in all its details? Well, in the face of a possible crime, I allow it to pass my lips. Yes, Diane, you must take in their literal meaning the words which I let bill in my agony a moment ago. Diane, it is possible that you are the daughter of the Comte de Montgommery, my father; it is possible that you are my sister."
"Holy Virgin!" murmured Madame de Castro, overwhelmed by this revelation. "But how can it be?" she added.
"I should have preferred," said Gabriel, "that your pure and peaceful life should never have come to know aught of this mystery, so full of terror and crime. But I am confident, alas! that in the end my strength alone would not have been sufficient to prevail against my love. So you must assist me against yourself, Diane, and I will tell you all."
"I listen, Gabriel, in terrible dread, but with attention," said Diane.
Gabriel then narrated everything to her: how his father had loved Madame de Poitiers, and in the eyes of all the court had seemed to be favored by her; how the dauphin, the present king, had become his rival; how the Comte de Montgommery had disappeared one day, and how Aloyse had come to know, and had revealed to his son what had taken place. But that was the extent of the nurse's information; and since Madame de Poitiers obstinately refused to speak, the Comte de Montgommery alone, if he were still living, could tell the secret of Diane's birth.