"
"What do you expect me to know, Marie?"
"Well! about Nathan."
"You think you love him," he replied; "but you love a phantom made of
words."
"Then you know--"
"All," he said.
The word fell on Marie's head like the blow of a club.
"If you wish it, I will know nothing," he continued. "You are standing
on the brink of a precipice, my child, and I must draw you from it. I
have already done something. See!"
He drew from his pocket her letter of guarantee and the four notes
endorsed by Schmucke, and let the countess recognize them; then he
threw them into the fire.
"What would have happened to you, my poor Marie, three months hence?"
he said. "The sheriffs would have taken you to a public court-room.
Don't bow your head, don't feel humiliated; you have been the dupe of
noble feelings; you have coquetted with poesy, not with a man. All
women--all, do you hear me, Marie?--would have been seduced in your
position. How absurd we should be, we men, we who have committed a
thousand follies through a score of years, if we were not willing to
grant you one imprudence in a lifetime! God keep me from triumphing
over you or from offering you a pity you repelled so vehemently the
other day. Perhaps that unfortunate man was sincere when he wrote to
you, sincere in attempting to kill himself, sincere in returning that
same night to Florine. Men are worth less than women.
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