The shrubs, the
birches, the willows, the poplars were showing their first diaphanous
and tender foliage. No soul resists these harmonies. Love explained
Nature as it had already explained society to Marie's heart.
"I wish you have never loved any one but me," she said.
"Your wish is realized," replied Raoul. "We have awakened in each
other the only true love."
He spoke the truth as he felt it. Posing before this innocent young
heart as a pure man, Raoul was caught himself by his own fine
sentiments. At first purely speculative and born of vanity, his love
had now become sincere. He began by lying, he had ended in speaking
truth. In all writers there is ever a sentiment, difficult to stifle,
which impels them to admire the highest good. The countess, on her
part, after her first rush of gratitude and surprise, was charmed to
have inspired such sacrifices, to have caused him to surmount such
difficulties. She was beloved by a man who was worthy of her! Raoul
was totally ignorant to what his imaginary grandeur bound him. Women
will not suffer their idol to step down from his pedestal. They do not
forgive the slightest pettiness in a god. Marie was far from knowing
the solution to the riddle given by Raoul to his friends at Very's.
The struggle of this writer, risen from the lower classes, had cost
him the ten first years of his youth; and now in the days of his
success he longed to be loved by one of the queens of the great world.
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