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It would cost me rather too much to play the saint, seeing that convent ways are not quite my ways, and that I don't know how to wear the habit; so I shall throw the cowl to the winds, and content myself with building a chapel at Roche-Mauprat and taking the sacrament four times a year. "'Everything you have done in this matter is stupid and infamous. "'Bless my soul!
This is the only promise that is valid." "My father would consent yes, with joy to an arrangement which perpetuated his name and line directly. As to M. de la March, he will release me from any promise without my taking the trouble to ask him; as soon as he hears that I passed two hours at Roche-Mauprat there will be no need of any other explanation."
"Good," he said; "it will be like old times when the peasants used to eat at the table of the seigneurs of Roche-Mauprat. You are doing the same, Monsieur Bernard, you are quite right." "Yes, sir," I replied very coldly; "only I behave thus with those who owe me money, not those to whom I owe it."
Edmee began to speak, and I was all ears again. "I know very well that at the end of three or four days I should have nothing better to do than cut my own throat; but since sooner or later it must come to that, why should I not go forward to the inevitable hour? I confess that I shall be sorry to leave life. Not all those who have been to Roche-Mauprat have returned.
I had firmly resolved not to presume upon the oath extorted from her at Roche-Mauprat; yet, when I remembered her last promise, freely given at the chapel window, and the inferences which I could have drawn from her conversation with the abbe which I had overheard in the parlour at Sainte-Severe; when I remembered her earnestness in preventing me from going away and in directing my education; the motherly attentions she had lavished on me during my illness did not all these things give me, if not some right, at least some reason to hope?
I was no longer the man of the day before, and never again was I to be quite the man of Roche-Mauprat. It was late, for not until morning had I attempted to make good my sleepless night. I was still in bed when I heard the hoofs of M. de la Marche's horse on the stones of the courtyard.
It was the same with the abbe, to whom I likewise wrote a letter full of gratitude and affection. I ended by begging my uncle to put himself to no expense on my account over the gloomy keep at Roche-Mauprat, assuring him that I could never bring myself to live there.
Though nothing was less respected at Roche-Mauprat than the sanctity of an oath, yet the little reading I had had there those ballads of chivalry of which I have already spoken had filled me with an almost romantic love of good faith; and this was about the only virtue I had acquired there. My promise of secrecy to Edmee was therefore inviolable in my eyes.
"My friend," replied Edmee, putting, to my infinite astonishment, her little white hand into the sorcerer's big rough palm, "welcome him as you welcome me. I was a prisoner at Roche-Mauprat, and it was he who rescued me." "May the sins of his fathers be forgiven him for this act!" said the cure. Patience took me by the arm, without saying anything, and led me nearer the fire.
However, I could not prevent Marcasse from carrying out his design; early the following morning he disappeared, and I learnt from Patience that he had returned to Roche-Mauprat under the pretence of having forgotten something. While Marcasse was devoting himself to serious investigations, I was spending days of delight and agony in Edmee's presence.
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