"That I can quite believe, for I do not understand myself," said Edmee,
with a peculiar expression.

"My dear child, you must open your hear to me freely. I am the only
person here who can advise you, since I am the only one to whom you can
tell everything under the seal of a friendship as sacred as the secrecy
of Catholic confession can be. Answer me, then. You do not really look
upon a marriage between yourself and Bernard Mauprat as possible?"

"How should that which is inevitable be impossible?" said Edmee. "There
is nothing more possible than throwing one's self into the river;
nothing more possible than surrendering one's self to misery and
despair; nothing more possible, consequently, than marrying Bernard
Mauprat."

"In any case I will not be the one to celebrate such an absurd and
deplorable union," cried the abbe. "You, the wife and the slave of this
Hamstringer! Edmee, you said just now that you would no more endure the
violence of a lover than a husband's blow."

"You think the he would beat me?"

"If he did not kill you."

"Oh, no," she replied, in a resolute tone, with a wave of the knife, "I
would kill him first. When Mauprat meets Mauprat . . .!"

"You can laugh, Edmee? O my God! you can laugh at the thought of such
a match! But, even if this man had some affection and esteem for you,