IV.
So matters stood in the Rue des Poulies at the time of that remarkable meeting which opens this eventful history, and apropos of which an observer in the attic asked himself, as you may remember, “Which does she like best?” Raoul’s rage upon this knew no bounds; and Papa Lamouracq, when he came to hear of it, was little better. They both insisted that the wedding-day should be fixed at once, and for no distant date, and poor Pauline was fain to consent. Yet, as the fatal day drew near, she shrank from it more and more. School herself as she would into obedience to her father’s will and love for her future husband, the coming marriage filled her with an invincible repugnance. Was it because she had given her heart to another, or only because Raoul’s brutality had alienated her esteem? I do not know; she did not know herself: it was a question she never dared ask her heart.
In the midst of this moral conflict by which she was so cruelly torn her mind went back often and longingly to the serenity and calm of the convent where she had passed so many of her early years, and to the peaceful, happy faces of the nuns. She yearned with an inexpressible yearning to be among them once more; she had even wild, half-formed thoughts of flying from her wretchedness and trouble and taking refuge in that quiet haven.
Naturally, therefore, when André, to whom she had dropped an intimation of her thought, urged her strongly to act upon it, she turned and rent him.
“How dare you say such things to me!” she cried with more passion than he had ever seen her show. “How dare you advise me to disobey my father! You know very well my first duty is to him. He wishes me to marry Raoul, and—and I wish it. I am not miserable. I love Raoul dearly, and we shall be very hap—hap—happy.”
And to prove the joyful nature of her anticipations she burst forthwith into tears.
The poor poet stood aghast; he was not prepared for this display of feminine consistency. Genius as he was, he had yet to learn that to set a woman against a doubtful project she is coquetting with in her mind, the surest way is to urge her to it. Dearly as he loved his cousin and wished to make her his wife, he loved her happiness more, and would joyfully have seen her take the veil, marry the mousquetaire even, whom he suspected her of favoring, anything to escape this marriage, in what he foresaw for her only wretchedness, if not death. Raoul in his drunken furies, he knew, would stop at nothing, and even as a lover he had threatened her life.
“But,” he stammered, conscience-stricken, “I thought you said you wished to be in the convent.”
“You know I never said anything of the kind,” sobbed the indignant fair. “I forbid you ever to say such things to me again. You are very unkind to tease me so, and it is only your mis—miserable jealousy.”
The poet winced under this poisoned shaft, but was too generous to retaliate. His cousin had the right of suffering to be unjust.