"You are young, beautiful, life will console you; you are noble, and the
memory of a good deed will redeem you from many past deeds. During the
six months that he has known you Armand has forgotten me. I wrote to him
four times, and he has never once replied. I might have died and he not
known it!
"Whatever may be your resolution of living otherwise than as you have
lived, Armand, who loves you, will never consent to the seclusion to
which his modest fortune would condemn you, and to which your beauty
does not entitle you. Who knows what he would do then! He has gambled,
I know; without telling you of it, I know also, but, in a moment of
madness, he might have lost part of what I have saved, during many
years, for my daughter's portion, for him, and for the repose of my old
age. What might have happened may yet happen.
"Are you sure, besides, that the life which you are giving up for him
will never again come to attract you? Are you sure, you who have loved
him, that you will never love another? Would you not-suffer on seeing
the hindrances set by your love to your lover's life, hindrances for
which you would be powerless to console him, if, with age, thoughts of
ambition should succeed to dreams of love? Think over all that, madame.
You love Armand; prove it to him by the sole means which remains to you
of yet proving it to him, by sacrificing your love to his future. No
misfortune has yet arrived, but one will arrive, and perhaps a greater
one than those which I foresee. Armand might become jealous of a man who
has loved you; he might provoke him, fight, be killed. Think, then, what
you would suffer in the presence of a father who should call on you to
render an account for the life of his son!
"Finally, my dear child, let me tell you all, for I have not yet
told you all, let me tell you what has brought me to Paris. I have a
daughter, as I have told you, young, beautiful, pure as an angel. She
loves, and she, too, has made this love the dream of her life. I wrote
all that to Armand, but, absorbed in you, he made no reply. Well, my
daughter is about to marry. She is to marry the man whom she loves; she
enters an honourable family, which requires that mine has to be no less
honourable. The family of the man who is to become my son-in-law has
learned what manner of life Armand is leading in Paris, and has declared
to me that the marriage must be broken off if Armand continues this
life. The future of a child who has done nothing against you, and who
has the right of looking forward to a happy future, is in your hands.
Have you the right, have you the strength, to shatter it? In the name of
your love and of your repentance, Marguerite, grant me the happiness of
my child."