"What is that?"

"Love without hope, when it inspires our life, when it fills us with
the spirit of sacrifice, when it ennobles every act by the thought of
reaching some ideal perfection. Yes, the angels approve of such love;
it leads to the knowledge of God. To aim at perfection in order to be
worthy of the one you love, to make for him a thousand secret
sacrifices, adoring him from afar, giving your blood drop by drop,
abnegating your self-love, never feeling any pride or anger as regards
him, even concealing from him all knowledge of the dreadful jealousy
he fires in your heart, giving him all he wishes were it to your own
loss, loving what he loves, always turning your face to him to follow
him without his knowing it--such love as that religion would have
forgiven; it is no offence to laws human or divine, and would have led
you into another road than that of your foul voluptuousness."

As she heard this horrible verdict, uttered in a word--and such a
word! and spoken in such a tone!--Esther's spirit rose up in fairly
legitimate distrust. This word was like a thunder-clap giving warning
of a storm about to break. She looked at the priest, and felt the grip
on her vitals which wrings the bravest when face to face with sudden
and imminent danger. No eye could have read what was passing in this
man's mind; but the boldest would have found more to quail at than to
hope for in the expression of his eyes, once bright and yellow like
those of a tiger, but now shrouded, from austerities and privations,
with a haze like that which overhangs the horizon in the dog-days,
when, though the earth is hot and luminous, the mist makes it
indistinct and dim--almost invisible.