Part 8 (1/2)

MARWOOD.

Why differently? With more love, perhaps? With more delight? Alas, how unhappy I am, that I cannot express all that I feel! Do you not see, Mellefont, do you not see that joy, too, has its tears? Here they fall, the offspring of sweetest delight! But alas, vain tears! His hand does not dry you!

MELLEFONT.

Marwood, the time is gone, when such words would have charmed me. You must speak now with me in another tone. I come to hear your last reproaches and to answer them.

MARWOOD.

Reproaches? What reproaches should I have for you, Mellefont? None!

MELLEFONT.

Then you might have spared yourself the journey, I should think.

MARWOOD.

Dearest, capricious heart. Why will you forcibly compel me to recall a trifle which I forgave you the same moment I heard of it? Does a pa.s.sing infidelity which your gallantry, but not your heart, has caused, deserve these reproaches? Come, let us laugh at it!

MELLEFONT.

You are mistaken; my heart is more concerned in it, than it ever was in all our love affairs, upon which I cannot now look back but with disgust.

MARWOOD.

Your heart, Mellefont, is a good little fool. It lets your imagination persuade it to whatever it will. Believe me, I know it better than you do yourself! Were it not the best, the most faithful of hearts, should I take such pains to keep it?

MELLEFONT.

To keep it? You have never possessed it, I tell you.

MARWOOD.

And I tell you, that in reality I possess it still!

MELLEFONT.

Marwood! if I knew that you still possessed one single fibre of it, I would tear it out of my breast here before your eyes.

MARWOOD.

You would see that you were tearing mine out at the same time. And then, then these hearts would at last attain that union which they have sought so often upon our lips.

MELLEFONT (_aside_).

What a serpent! Flight will be the best thing here.--Just tell me briefly, Marwood, why you have followed me, and what you still desire of me! But tell it me without this smile, without this look, in which a whole' h.e.l.l of seduction lurks and terrifies me.

MARWOOD (_insinuatingly_).

Just listen, my dear Mellefont! I see your position now. Your desires and your taste are at present your tyrants. Never mind, one must let them wear themselves out. It is folly to resist them. They are most safely lulled to sleep, and at last even conquered, by giving them free scope. They wear themselves away. Can you accuse me, my fickle friend, of ever having been jealous, when more powerful charms than mine estranged you from me for a time? I never grudged you the change, by which I always won more than I lost. You returned with new ardour, with new pa.s.sion to my arms, in which with light bonds, and never with heavy fetters I encompa.s.sed you. Have I not often even been your confidante though you had nothing to confide but the favours which you stole from me, in order to lavish them on others. Why should you believe then, that I would now begin to display a capriciousness just when I am ceasing, or, perhaps have already ceased, to be justified in it. If your ardour for the pretty country girl has not yet cooled down, if you are still in the first fever of your love for her; if you cannot yet do without the enjoyment she gives you; who hinders you from devoting yourself to her, as long as you think good? But must you on that account make such rash projects, and purpose to fly from the country with her?