Volume III Part 79 (1/2)
”Ah! dear father, pity, pity!”
”But, as a man of honor, I thought of the sad past life of my child. Thus, far from encouraging the hopes of Henry, I gave him, in several conversations, advice absolutely contradictory from what he would have expected from me if I had thought of giving him your hand. In such a situation, one so delicate, as a father and a man of honor, it was inc.u.mbent on me to keep a rigorous neutrality, not to encourage the love of your cousin, but to treat him with the same affability as formerly. You have been hitherto so unhappy, my beloved child, that seeing you, so to speak, reviving under the impulse of this n.o.ble and pure love, I could not for anything in the world have deprived you of its divine and rare joys.
Admitting even that this love must afterward be broken off, you would at least have known some days of innocent happiness, and then, finally, this love might secure your future repose.”
”My repose?”
”Listen again. The father of Henry, Prince Paul, has just written to me--here is his letter. Though he regards this alliance as an unhoped-for favor, he asks of me your hand for his son, who, he says, feels for you the most respectful, the most pa.s.sionate love.”
”Oh!” said Fleur-de-Marie, hiding her face in her hands, ”I might have been so happy!”
”Courage, my well-beloved daughter; if you wish it, this happiness is yours,” cried Rudolph, tenderly.
”Oh! never, never; do you forget?”
”I forget nothing; but if to-morrow you enter the convent, riot only I lose you forever, but you quit me for a life of tears and austerity. Oh! to _lose_ you! to lose _you_! Let me at least know that you are happy, and married to the man you love and who adores you.”
”Married to him! Me, dear father!”
”Yes; but on condition that, immediately after your marriage, contracted here at night, without other witnesses than Murphy for you and Baron Graun for Henry, you shall both go to some tranquil retreat in Switzerland or Italy, to live unknown as wealthy citizens. Now, my beloved daughter, do you know why I resign myself to a separation from you? Do you know why I desire Henry to quit his t.i.tle when he is out of Germany. It is because I am sure that, in the midst of a solitary happiness, concentrated in an existence deprived of all display, little by little you will forget this odious past, which is especially painful to you because it forms such a bitter contrast to the ceremonious homage with which you are constantly surrounded.”
”Rudolph is right,” cried Clemence: ”alone with Henry, continually happy with his happiness and your own, you will no longer have time to think, my dear child, of your former sorrows.”
”Then, as it will be impossible for me to be long without seeing you, every year Clemence and I will go to visit you.”
”And some day, when the wound of which you suffer, poor little angel, shall be healed, when you shall have found forgetfulness in happiness, and this moment will come sooner than you think, you will return to us, never to leave us.”
”Forgetfulness in happiness,” murmured Fleur-de-Marie, who, in spite of herself, was soothed by this enchanting vision.
”Yes, yes, my child,” replied Clemence, ”when at every moment of the day you see yourself blessed, respected, adored by the husband of your choice, by the man whose n.o.ble and generous heart your father has extolled to you a thousand times, shall you have leisure to think of the past, and even if you should think of it, why should the past sadden you? why should it prevent you from believing in the radiant felicity of your husband?”
”Finally it is true, for tell me, my child,” replied Rudolph, who could scarcely restrain his tears at seeing that his daughter hesitated, ”adored by your husband, when you shall have the knowledge and the proof of the happiness which he owes to you, what reproaches can you make yourself?”
”Father,” said Fleur-de-Marie, forgetting the past for this ineffable hope, ”can so much happiness be reserved for me?”
”Ah, I was sure of it,” cried Rudolph, in an ecstasy of triumphant joy; ”is there a father who wishes it, who cannot restore happiness to an adored child?”
”She merits so much that we ought to be heard, my friend,” said Clemence, sharing the transport of her husband.
”To marry Henry, and some day to pa.s.s my whole life between him, my second mother, and my father,” replied Fleur-de-Marie, yielding more and more to the sweet intoxication of her thoughts.
”Yes, my beloved angel, we shall all be happy. I will reply to Henry's father that I consent to the marriage,” cried Rudolph, pressing Fleur-de Marie in his arms with indescribable emotion. ”Take courage, our separation will be short; the new duties which your marriage will impose upon you will confirm your steps still more in the path of forgetfulness and felicity in which you will henceforth tread, for finally, if you should one day be a mother, it would not be only for yourself that it would be necessary you should be happy.”
”Ah!” cried Fleur-de-Marie, with a heart-rending cry, for this word _mother_ awoke her from the enchanting dream which was lulling her.
”Mother? me!--Oh, never! I am unworthy that holy name; I should die with shame before my child, if I had not died with shame before its father, in making him the avowal of the past.”
”What does she say, gracious heaven!” cried Rudolph, stunned by the abrupt change.