“Your mind is too pure for such wretched intrigues. I do not want your
wedding-dress to be stained by a speck of that mud into which they have
thrown me.”
Was she deceived? No; but she had the courage to seem to be deceived.
She went on quietly,--
“Very well, then. But the truth will have to be told sooner or later.”
“Yes, to M. Magloire.”
“Well, then, Jacques, write down at once what you mean to tell him. Here
are pen and ink: I will carry it to him faithfully.”
“There are things, Dionysia, which cannot be written.”
She felt she was beaten; she understood that nothing would ever bend
that iron will, and yet she said once more,--
“But if I were to beseech you, Jacques, by our past and our future, by
that great and eternal love which you have sworn?”
“Do you really wish to make my prison hours a thousand times harder than
they are? Do you want to deprive me of my last remnant of strength and
of courage? Have you really no confidence in me any longer? Could you
not believe me a few days more?”
He paused. Somebody knocked at the door; and almost at the same time
Blangin the jailer called out through the wicket,--
“Time is passing. I want to be down stairs when they relieve guard. I am
running a great risk. I am a father of a family.”
“Go home now, Dionysia,” said Jacques eagerly, “go home. I cannot think
of your being seen here.”
Dionysia had paid dear enough to know that she was quite safe; still she
did not object. She offered her brow to Jacques, who touched it with
his lips; and half dead, holding on to the walls, she went back to the
jailer’s little room. They had made up a bed for her, and she threw
herself on it, dressed as she was, and remained there, immovable, as if
she had been dead, overcome by a kind of stupor which deprived her even
of the faculty of suffering.
It was bright daylight, it was eight o’clock, when she felt somebody
pulling her sleeve. The jailer’s wife said to her,--
“My dear young lady, this would be a good time for you to slip away.
Perhaps they will wonder to see you alone in the street; but they will
think you are coming home from seven o’clock mass.”
Without saying a word, Dionysia jumped down, and in a moment she had
arranged her hair and her dress. Then Blangin came, rather troubled at
not seeing her leave the house; and she said to him, giving him one of
the thousand-franc rolls that were still in her bag,--
“This is for you: I want you to remember me, if I should need you
again.”
And, dropping her veil over her face, she went away.