"The smoke is unpleasant to you, no doubt, madame?" he said, and rising at once, he took a chafing-dish from the hearth, burnt perfumes, and purified the air.The Duchess's astonishment was only equalled by her humiliation.She was in this man's power;and he would not abuse his power.The eyes in which love had once blazed like flame were now quiet and steady as stars.She trembled.Her dread of Armand was increased by a nightmare sensation of restlessness and utter inability to move; she felt as if she were turned to stone.She lay passive in the grip of fear.She thought she saw the light behind the curtains grow to a blaze, as if blown up by a pair of bellows; in another moment the gleams of flame grew brighter, and she fancied that three masked figures suddenly flashed out; but the terrible vision disappeared so swiftly that she took it for an optical delusion.
"Madame," Armand continued with cold contempt, "one minute, just one minute is enough for me, and you shall feel it afterwards at every moment throughout your lifetime, the one eternity over which I have power.I am not God.Listen carefully to me," he continued, pausing to add solemnity to his words."Love will always come at your call.You have boundless power over men: but remember that once you called love, and love came to you; love as pure and true-hearted as may be on earth, and as reverent as it was passionate; fond as a devoted woman's, as a mother's love; a love so great indeed, that it was past the bounds of reason.You played with it, and you committed a crime.
Every woman has a right to refuse herself to love which she feels she cannot share; and if a man loves and cannot win love in return, he is not to be pitied, he has no right to complain.But with a semblance of love to attract an unfortunate creature cut off from all affection; to teach him to understand happiness to the full, only to snatch it from him; to rob him of his future of felicity; to slay his happiness not merely today, but as long as his life lasts, by poisoning every hour of it and every thought--this I call a fearful crime!""Monsieur----"
"I cannot allow you to answer me yet.So listen to me still.
In any case I have rights over you; but I only choose to exercise one--the right of the judge over the criminal, so that I may arouse your conscience.If you had no conscience left, I should not reproach you at all; but you are so young! You must feel some life still in your heart; or so I like to believe.While Ithink of you as depraved enough to do a wrong which the law does not punish, I do not think you so degraded that you cannot comprehend the full meaning of my words.I resume."As he spoke the Duchess heard the smothered sound of a pair of bellows.Those mysterious figures which she had just seen were blowing up the fire, no doubt; the glow shone through the curtain.But Montriveau's lurid face was turned upon her; she could not choose but wait with a fast-beating heart and eyes fixed in a stare.However curious she felt, the heat in Armand's words interested her even more than the crackling of the mysterious flames.
"Madame," he went on after a pause, "if some poor wretch commits a murder in Paris, it is the executioner's duty, you know, to lay hands on him and stretch him on the plank, where murderers pay for their crimes with their heads.Then the newspapers inform everyone, rich and poor, so that the former are assured that they may sleep in peace, and the latter are warned that they must be on the watch if they would live.Well, you that are religious, and even a little of a bigot, may have masses said for such a man's soul.You both belong to the same family, but yours is the elder branch; and the elder branch may occupy high places in peace and live happily and without cares.Want or anger may drive your brother the convict to take a man's life;you have taken more, you have taken the joy out of a man's life, you have killed all that was best in his life--his dearest beliefs.The murderer simply lay in wait for his victim, and killed him reluctantly, and in fear of the scaffold; but YOU..
.! You heaped up every sin that weakness can commit against strength that suspected no evil; you tamed a passive victim, the better to gnaw his heart out; you lured him with caresses; you left nothing undone that could set him dreaming, imagining, longing for the bliss of love.You asked innumerable sacrifices of him, only to refuse to make any in return.He should see the light indeed before you put out his eyes! It is wonderful how you found the heart to do it! Such villainies demand a display of resource quite above the comprehension of those bourgeoises whom you laugh at and despise.They can give and forgive; they know how to love and suffer.The grandeur of their devotion dwarfs us.Rising higher in the social scale, one finds just as much mud as at the lower end; but with this difference, at the upper end it is hard and gilded over.
"Yes, to find baseness in perfection, you must look for a noble bringing up, a great name, a fair woman, a duchess.You cannot fall lower than the lowest unless you are set high above the rest of the world.--I express my thoughts badly; the wounds you dealt me are too painful as yet, but do not think that I complain.My words are not the expression of any hope for myself; there is no trace of bitterness in them.Know this, madame, for a certainty--I forgive you.My forgiveness is so complete that you need not feel in the least sorry that you came hither to find it against your will....But you might take advantage of other hearts as child-like as my own, and it is my duty to spare them anguish.So you have inspired the thought of justice.Expiate your sin here on earth; God may perhaps forgive you; I wish that He may, but He is inexorable, and will strike."The broken-spirited, broken-hearted woman looked up, her eyes filled with tears.