“‘He is dead,’ returned Sainte-Croix, ‘and we are free!’”
There was a pause, and they looked at each other for nearly a minute.
“‘Come,’ at length said the Marchioness, ‘come to the ball.’”
A prominent and very interesting figure in Mr. Smith’s book is Louise Gauthier, a girl of comparatively humble birth, who had the misfortune to love Sainte-Croix with the intense self-sacrificing love that good women so often show for bad men, who return their affection with coldness and neglect. This girl, who had become the friend of Marotte Dupré, one of the actresses in the plays of Molière which were part of the attraction at the Versailles fête, accompanied the actress to Versailles, where she accidentally overheard a conversation between the Marchioness of Brinvilliers and M. de Sainte-Croix, which not only convinced her that the love for her that Sainte-Croix had once professed was given to another, but that some fearful tie existed between the two, caused by actions which had destroyed their happiness here and their hopes of it hereafter.
She came from her concealment, and was received with jealous fury by the Marchioness, who believed, or affected to believe, that the girl was at “the grotto” by appointment with Sainte-Croix. She bestowed what is commonly called “a piece of her mind” upon her lover, and concluded her rhapsody by informing him that from henceforth “we meet no more.” Louise, however, convinced the passionate Marchioness that she had made no appointment, but was at “the grotto” by, “perhaps, a dispensation of Providence,” in order that she might, having overheard their guilty conversation, so act upon their consciences as to “save them both.”
The first result of her good intentions is a declaration to the Marchioness by Sainte-Croix that, though there had been some love-passages between him and the girl, they were “madness, infatuation—call it what name you will; but you are the only one I ever loved.” Thus the ruffian speaks in the presence of the woman he had betrayed; but her love, though crushed, still urges her to become the man’s good angel, and, seizing his arm, she cries:
“‘Hear me, Gaudin. By the recollection of what we once were to each other—although you scorn me now, and the shadowy remembrance of old times—before these terrible circumstances, whatever they may be, had thus turned your heart from me and from your God, there is still time to make amends for all that has occurred. I do not speak for myself, for all those feelings have passed, but for you alone. Repent and be happy, for happy now you are not!’”
“Gaudin made no reply, but his bosom heaved rapidly, betraying his emotion.
“‘This is idle talk,’ said the Marchioness.... ‘Will you not come with me, Gaudin?’
“‘Marie!’ cried Gaudin faintly, ‘take me where you list. In life or after it, on earth or in hell, I am yours—yours only!’