"Ah! my poor friend!" he said at last in a voice trembling with revolt
and grief. "So you have agreed to that marriage--yes, that abominable
marriage with that woman's daughter! Yet you swore it should never be!
You would rather witness the collapse of everything, you said. And now
you are consenting, I can feel it!"
She still wept on in that black, silent drawing-room before the
chimney-piece where the fire had died out. Did not Gerard's marriage to
Camille mean a happy ending for herself, a certainty of leaving her son
wealthy, loved, and seated at the banquet of life? However, a last
feeling of rebellion arose within her.
"No, no," she exclaimed, "I don't consent, I swear to you that I don't
consent as yet. I am fighting with my whole strength, waging an incessant
battle, the torture of which you cannot imagine."
Then, in all sincerity, she foresaw the likelihood of defeat. "If I
should some day give way, my friend, at all events believe that I feel,
as fully as you do, how abominable such a marriage must be. It will be
the end of our race and our honour!"
This cry profoundly stirred the Marquis, and he was unable to add a word.
Haughty and uncompromising Catholic and Royalist that he was, he, on his
side also, expected nothing but the supreme collapse. Yet how
heartrending was the thought that this noble woman, so dearly and so
purely loved, would prove one of the most mournful victims of the
catastrophe! And in the shrouding gloom he found courage to kneel before
her, take her hand, and kiss it.
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