'Consider!' Clotilde flutteringly entreated him.

'The world? you dear heaven of me! Looking down on me does not
compromise you, and I am not ashamed of my devotions. I sat in gloom:
you came: I saw my goddess and worshipped. The world, Lutece, the world
is a variable monster; it rends the weak whether sincere or false; but
those who weld strength with sincerity may practise their rites of
religion publicly, and it fawns to them, and bellows to imitate. Nay, I
say that strength in love is the sole sincerity, and the world knows it,
muffs it in the air about us, and so we two are privileged. Politically
also we know that strength is the one reality: the rest is shadow.
Behind the veil of our human conventions power is constant as ever, and
to perceive the fact is to have the divining rod-to walk clear of shams.
He is the teacher who shows where power exists: he is the leader who
wakens and forms it. Why have I unfailingly succeeded?--I never doubted!
The world voluntarily opens a path to those who step determinedly. You--
to your honour?--I won't decide--but you have the longest in my
experience resisted. I have a Durandal to hew the mountain walls; I have
a voice for ears, a net for butterflies, a hook for fish, and desperation
to plunge into marshes: but the feu follet will not be caught. One must
wait--wait till her desire to have a soul bids her come to us. She has
come! A soul is hers: and see how, instantly, the old monster, the
world, which has no soul--not yet: we are helping it to get one--becomes
a shadow, powerless to stop or overawe. For I do give you a soul, think
as you will of it. I give you strength to realize, courage to act. It
is the soul that does things in this life--the rest is vapour. How do we
distinguish love?--as we do music by the pure note won from resolute
strings. The tense chord is music, and it is love. This higher and
higher mountain air, with you beside me, sweeps me like a harp.'