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? It is true that her friendship would become icy as
soon as my passion betrayed itself in words or looks; it is true that
since the first day I saw her I had not advanced a single step towards
close affection; it is also true that M. de la Marche frequently came to
the house, and that she always showed him as much friendship as myself,
though with less familiarity and more respect in it, a distinction which
was naturally due to the difference in our characters and our ages, and
did not indicate any preference for one or the other. It was possible,
therefore, to attribute her promise to the prompting of her conscience;
the interest which she took in my studies to her worship of human
dignity as it stood rehabilitated by philosophy; her quiet and continued
affection for M. de la March to a profound regret, kept in subjection
by the strength and wisdom of her mind. These perplexities I felt very
acutely. The hope of compelling her love by submission and devotion had
sustained me; but this hope was beginning to grow weak; for though, as
all allowed, I had made prodigious efforts and extraordinary progress,
Edmee's regard for me had been very far from increasing in the same
proportion. She had not shown any astonishment at what she called my
lofty intellect; she had always believed in it; she had praised it
unreasonably. But she was not blind to the faults in my character,
to the vices of my soul. She had reproached me with these with an
inexorable sweetness, with a patience calculated to drive me to despair;
for she seemed to have made up her mind that, whatever the future might
bring, she would never love me more and never less.