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No such idea had entered Evelyn's mind. She would not readily have understood that love could have any sort of relation to riches or poverty.
Did she even love him were even her parents to consent, his own, for his vivid and excited fancy for one minute imagined what in more sober moments he knew was impossible yet even were such difficulties removed, would he, could he take that fair and fragile creature from a home of luxury and every comfort to poverty? What had he to support a wife?
"You are free to go now, sir," said she. "There lies your honour's way." I thanked her warmly, offering her my hand. But she put hers behind her. "Is that all you are going to give me?" she asked me, and made me blush for my poverty. "I would give you something very handsome if I had it," I said, "for you have done me a real service.
Since leaving La Chance, save for that one glimpse over the edge back in the Vermont mountains, she had been so consistently surrounded by the padded satin of possessions that she had forgotten how actual poverty looked. In fact, she had never had more than the briefest fleeting glances at it. This was so extravagant, so extreme, that it seemed impossible to her.
"If I am reproached for my poverty, I am sure that it is my treasure;" and with these words of St. Ambrose, on the birth of Christ: "His poverty is my patrimony; He chose to want for everything, in order that all others might be in abundance." The cardinal presented Francis to the Pope, that he might solicit the confirmation of his Rule.
To religion it brought about a general indifference, which in the higher ranks of the clergy took effect in disregard of their duties and in a shameless scramble for lucrative posts, and in the lower ranks produced poverty and social degradation.
As to love: "We cannot permit love to run riot; we must build fences around it, as we do around pigs." As to money: "In theory, it is not respectable to be rich. In fact, poverty is a disgrace." As to literature: "Poets are prophets whose prophesying never comes true." As to prudence: "Trying to live a spiritual life in a material world is the greatest folly I know anything about."
The extreme poverty of the parents had enabled him easily to persuade them to hush up the matter, but something of the story got abroad; the poor girl was marked out for that gossip and scandal, which among the very lowest classes are as coarse in the expression as malignant in the sentiment; and in the paroxysm of shame and despair, the unfortunate girl had that day destroyed herself.
Christopher had no expectations either, except of a stiff struggle with the world, but the two young people loved each other, and, having their choice of proverbs, they discarded the one which relates to poverty and a door and love and a window, and selected for their own guidance that cheerful saying which sets forth the belief that what is enough for one is enough for two.
Fit a man's education to his real self, not to what is no part of him. Do you not see that in striving to fit him merely for one station, you are unfitting him for anything else, so that some caprice of Fortune may make your work really harmful to him? What could be more absurd than a nobleman in rags, who carries with him into his poverty the prejudices of his birth?
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