Oh! how willingly Clement would that moment have changed places with the prisoner! He was looking at Fleurange with sorrowful admiration when she resumed: “I thought it would not be difficult to find some one travelling to Russia with whom I could make the journey.”
“Go with strangers on so long and tedious a journey! That is impossible, Gabrielle, more impossible than the rest.”
“Ah!” cried Fleurange then, “with what confidence I would have had recourse to the kind friend Heaven once sent me. I feel his loss more now than ever.”
“You mean Doctor Leblanc?—Yes, I render justice to his memory. I am sure his devotedness would not have failed you under these circumstances. But you try my patience indeed, Gabrielle; you are too cruel.”
“Clement!—”
“What! you need a friend who has the unpretending merit of being faithful, devoted, capable of protecting you in so difficult a journey, and ready to remain with you till—till he [pg 305] can follow you no longer! And at such a time you do not deign even to remember you have a brother! And do you not see that, in thinking of others, you overlook what is at once his privilege and his duty?”
“Clement! my dear Clement!” said Fleurange, with tearful surprise, “what do you say? and what answer can I make? Assuredly I relied, and do rely, on you as a brother, and yet I confess I should not have ventured to ask you to make such a journey with me.”
Clement smiled bitterly. He could not help comparing what she was ready to do for another with what she thought him incapable of doing for her.
“Well, my cousin,” said he coldly, “you were wrong; it seems to me it was the very time to remember the promise you made me. As to me, I am merely faithful to the engagement I made the same day, that is all.”
“God bless you, Clement!—bless and reward you!” said she, much affected. “Yes, I acknowledge I was wrong. I should have known there was no kindness on earth equal to yours.”