Part 53 (1/2)
”Am I not worthy of respect then, heh?” answered Valerie, with a threatening gaze at Crevel.
”I never said so,” replied he, understanding that the praise of virtue might not be gratifying to Madame Marneffe.
”I am pious too,” Valerie went on, taking her seat in an armchair; ”but I do not make a trade of my religion. I go to church in secret.”
She sat in silence, and paid no further heed to Crevel. He, extremely ill at ease, came to stand in front of the chair into which Valerie had thrown herself, and saw her lost in the reflections he had been so foolish as to suggest.
”Valerie, my little Angel!”
Utter silence. A highly problematical tear was furtively dashed away.
”One word, my little duck?”
”Monsieur!”
”What are you thinking of, my darling?”
”Oh, Monsieur Crevel, I was thinking of the day of my first communion!
How pretty I was! How pure, how saintly!--immaculate!--Oh! if any one had come to my mother and said, 'Your daughter will be a hussy, and unfaithful to her husband; one day a police-officer will find her in a disreputable house; she will sell herself to a Crevel to cheat a Hulot--two horrible old men--' Poof! horrible--she would have died before the end of the sentence, she was so fond of me, poor dear!--”
”Nay, be calm.”
”You cannot think how well a woman must love a man before she can silence the remorse that gnaws at the heart of an adulterous wife. I am quite sorry that Reine is not here; she would have told you that she found me this morning praying with tears in my eyes. I, Monsieur Crevel, for my part, do not make a mockery of religion. Have you ever heard me say a word I ought not on such a subject?”
Crevel shook his head in negation.
”I will never allow it to be mentioned in my presence. I can make fun of anything under the sun: Kings, politics, finance, everything that is sacred in the eyes of the world--judges, matrimony, and love--old men and maidens. But the Church and G.o.d!--There I draw the line.--I know I am wicked; I am sacrificing my future life to you. And you have no conception of the immensity of my love.”
Crevel clasped his hands.
”No, unless you could see into my heart, and fathom the depth of my conviction so as to know the extent of my sacrifice! I feel in me the making of a Magdalen.--And see how respectfully I treat the priests; think of the gifts I make to the Church! My mother brought me up in the Catholic Faith, and I know what is meant by G.o.d! It is to sinners like us that His voice is most awful.”
Valerie wiped away two tears that trickled down her cheeks. Crevel was in dismay. Madame Marneffe stood up in her excitement.
”Be calm, my darling--you alarm me!”
Madame Marneffe fell on her knees.
”Dear Heaven! I am not bad all through!” she cried, clasping her hands.
”Vouchsafe to rescue Thy wandering lamb, strike her, crush her, s.n.a.t.c.h her from foul and adulterous hands, and how gladly she will nestle on Thy shoulder! How willingly she will return to the fold!”
She got up and looked at Crevel; her colorless eyes frightened him.
”Yes, Crevel, and, do you know? I, too, am frightened sometimes. The justice of G.o.d is exerted in this nether world as well as in the next.
What mercy can I expect at G.o.d's hands? His vengeance overtakes the guilty in many ways; it a.s.sumes every aspect of disaster. That is what my mother told me on her death-bed, speaking of her own old age.--But if I should lose you,” she added, hugging Crevel with a sort of savage frenzy--”oh! I should die!”
Madame Marneffe released Crevel, knelt down again at the armchair, folded her hands--and in what a bewitching att.i.tude!--and with incredible fervor poured out the following prayer:--
”And thou, Saint Valerie, my patron saint, why dost thou so rarely visit the pillow of her who was intrusted to thy care? Oh, come this evening, as thou didst this morning, to inspire me with holy thoughts, and I will quit the path of sin; like the Magdalen, I will give up deluding joys and the false glitter of the world, even the man I love so well--”