“Gracious heaven! you cannot be in earnest!” exclaimed Florian, retreating from him in deadly terror.
“Not in earnest?” rejoined the headsman, sternly; “I consider your compliance as a matter of course. You love my daughter—you have won her affections—and surely, Florian, you are not the man to play her false!”
“God forbid!” exclaimed Florian with honest fervour. “I dearly love her, and seek no happier lot than to become her husband.”
“I offered her to you, my son!” said the other with returning kindness; “but you did not like the conditions, and declined her. You have since, without my permission, sought and won her affections, and you have no right to flinch from the implied consequences. It is high time to come to a conclusion, and to apply yourself in good faith to the only pursuit through which you can ever obtain my Madelon.”
“The only one?” timidly repeated Florian. “I have, ’tis true, abandoned for your daughter’s sake the world, and the world’s prejudices; but I am young and industrious; I possess valuable knowledge, and surely I may find some employment which will maintain a wife and family. Do, my good father, relinquish this dreadful vocation”——
“And my daughter!” exclaimed the headsman, with loud and bitter emphasis. “What is to become her? If even you could step back within the pale of society, she would for ever be excluded. But you have neither moral courage nor animal bravery enough for any worldly pursuit—your original station in society is irrecoverably gone—and if you attempt to leave this safe asylum, the sword of justice will face you at every turn. No, no, Florian! I love my future son-in-law too well to expose him to such imminent and deadly peril. There, read that paper! The contents will bring you to your senses.”
With these words, which struck like a wintry chill into the heart of Florian, he took an old newspaper from his pocket-book. The unhappy fugitive received it with a shaking hand, and read a judicial summons from the authorities of D., seeking intelligence of a student, who had on a certain day quitted the university by the diligence for Normandy, and unaccountably disappeared. His Christian and surname, with an accurate description of his dress and person, were appended. Glancing fearfully down the page, he distinguished some particulars of a murder; his sight grew dim with terror; and after a vain attempt to read farther, he dropped the fatal document, and reeled back, breathless, and almost fainting, against the wall.
“He is the very man!” muttered the headsman, whose keen eye had been intently fixed upon him during the perusal. “I never asked your real name, young man,” he continued, “but now I know it. Your terrors would betray it to a child. How then are you, without fortitude to face the common evils of life, and bearing in every feature a betrayer, to escape the giant-grasp of the French police? And had this calamity never befallen you, how could you gain a support in a world, which, by your own confession, you have ever found ungenial and repulsive? Believe me, Florian! here, and here only, will you find safety, support, and happiness.”
“Happiness?” mournfully repeated Florian.