"Mon Dieu!" cried Anne, gazing earnestly into Ascanio's face, and seizing both his hands in hers: "Am I so fortunate that you are jealous? Does the king's love offend you? Listen: hitherto I have been in your eyes the duchess, wealthy, noble, powerful, offering to stir up crowned heads and overturn thrones. Do you prefer the poor, lonely woman, out of the world, with a simple white robe, and a wild flower in her hair? Do you prefer that, Ascanio? Let us leave Paris, the court, the world! Let us take refuge in some far off nook in your sunny Italy, beneath the lofty pines of Rome, or on the shores of your lovely Bay of Naples. Here I am: I am ready. O Ascanio, Ascanio, does it really flatter your pride, that I would sacrifice a crowned lover for your sake?" "Madame," said Ascanio, whose heart was beginning to melt in the flame of so great a passion, "madame, my heart is too proud and too exacting; you cannot give me the past." "The past! O you men, you men! always cruel! The past! In God's name ought an unfortunate woman to be compelled to answer for her past, when it has almost always been made what it was by events and circumstances stronger than herself? Suppose that a storm should arise and a whirlwind carry you off to Italy; when you return, one year, two years, three years hence, should you take it ill of your Colombe, whom you love so dearly to-day, because she had obeyed her parents and married Comte d'Orbec? Would you make her virtue a subject of reproach? would you punish her for obeying one of God's commandments? And if she had not your memory to feed upon, if she had never known you,--if, in her deathly ennui, crushed with grief, forgotten for a moment by God, she had sought to gain some knowledge of that paradise called love, the door of which was closed to her,--if she had loved another than her husband, whom she could not love,--if in a moment of delirium she had given her heart in exchange for another,--she would then be ruined in your eyes, dishonored in your heart. She could no longer hope to be blessed by your love, because she had not an unsullied past to give in exchange for your heart. Oh! I repeat, it is unjust, it is cruel!" "Madame--" "Who told you that is not my story? Listen to what I say, and believe what I declare to be the truth. I say again that I have suffered for both; and this poor woman, whom God forgives, you refuse to forgive. You do not understand how much greater and nobler it is to raise one's self from the abyss after falling into it, than to pass close by without seeing it, having the bandage of happiness over your eyes. O Ascanio, Ascanio! I deemed you better than the others, because you were younger, and fairer to look upon--" "O madame!"