“You would have me, then,” continued Marguerite, who had now said too much to pause, “you would have me, then, in order to preserve my name, and that of my other children, pure and unsullied, that I should immure myself with a man deprived of reason! you would have me banish from my sight, and from his, every living being, and that I should render my heart iron, that I may no longer feel—that my eyes should never shed a tear! You would have me, then, clothe myself in mourning as a widow, before my husband’s death? You would have my hair turn white, twenty years before the accustomed time?”
“Be silent! say not another word!” cried the marchioness, in a tone which proved that menaces were giving way to fear: “be silent!”
“You would have me, then,” continued Marguerite, carried away by the bitterness of her grief; “you would have me, then, in order that the dreadful secret might die with those who have the keeping of it, that I should banish from their death-beds, both priest and physician—you would, in fine, that I should wander from one death-bed to another, that I might close, not the eyes, but the mouths of the dying.”
“Be silent! in the name of heaven! be silent!” again cried the marchioness, wringing her hands.
“Well, then,” continued Marguerite, “tell me again, my mother, to sign this paper, and all this will happen, and the malediction of the Lord will be accomplished, and the faults of the fathers shall be visited upon the children, even to the third and fourth generations.”
“Ah! my God! my God!” exclaimed the marchioness, bursting into tears, “am I not sufficiently humbled—am I not sufficiently punished?”
“Pardon! pardon! madam,” cried Marguerite, recalled to filial feeling by the first tears she had ever seen her mother shed; “I implore you to forgive me.”
“Yes, pardon! ask for forgiveness, unnatural daughter,” said the marchioness, advancing toward Marguerite, “you who have wrenched the scourge from the hands of eternal vengeance, and have yourself applied the lash even on your mother’s forehead.”
“Mercy! mercy!” reiterated Marguerite; “pardon me, my mother. I knew not what I said. You had deprived me of reason—-I was mad!”
“Oh! my God! my God,” said the marchioness, raising both her hands above her daughter’s head, “Thou hast heard the words which have issued from my daughter’s lips. It would be too much to hope that thy mercy will forget them; but at the moment thou shalt punish her, remember that I have not cursed her!”