“We know it, and the Almighty God is there also.”
“Will you then designedly plunge yourselves into misery and a dungeon? The law forbids most strictly all meetings of this kind, and threatens death.”
“What law? The law of the mortal king? Thou shalt obey God rather than man.”
In this way my uncle knew how to surmount all my objections, by biblical quotations, and the more I urged the unlawfulness and danger of such meetings, and the more vividly I described the probable consequences, the more zealous he became.
“When Jesus was betrayed,” he exclaimed, “and when the traitor stood near him, and when he knew they were preparing to take him, then, oh! Colas, surrounded by the danger of certain death, he instituted the holy sacrament. And should we, who would be the disciples of Jesus, tremble? No, never; if all hell were in arms it should not terrify us.”
I could not bring my uncle to his senses; he called me an apostate, a hypocrite, a papist, and left me in a rage.
I returned to Clementine. She had seen my uncle, and the vexation expressed in all his gestures; she inquired the cause which I dared not disclose to her. Amidst her innocent caresses, my fear and uneasiness gradually left me. She told me that her mother agreed to all my wishes; this cheered me still more. On Clementine’s bosom I dreamed of the peaceful happiness of the future.
Withdrawn from the tumult of the world and its passions, I proposed to live alone with my young wife, surrounded by blooming nature, by love and friendship, and in the pursuit of science.
How happy we were both in these moments! “Oh! Clementine,” said I, “no throne is indeed required to make others happy, but only the will. We may be useful even in a small and insignificant sphere. We will visit the abodes of poverty. I shall again defend the cause of accused innocence, and a kiss shall be my reward when I have succeeded in accomplishing any good. Our library furnishes an inexhaustible store for the mind, and our harp shall sound in the evening, to record the unenvied felicity of two loving souls in the shade of our own grove. The poor shall eat at our table, and those consoled in their griefs shall be our companions. Surely, Clementine, we shall never yearn for the cold splendour of this palace. And some day, you, Clementine—the mere thought vibrates rapture through me—some day, Clementine, you will be a mother. Mother! oh, Clementine!”—Her kisses interrupted my words.
At this moment my servant entered pale as death and breathless.