"I hope, sir, that you will not insist on this journey when I tell you that it will be exceedingly disagreeable to me to quit Paris at this moment." "You are mistaken, madame; you will go." "Sir!" "Madame, the day after to-morrow you will depart." "I shall not depart!" "Indeed!" "Besides, I should be silly, indeed, to believe that you are speaking seriously to me; your ideas are sometimes so strange, your wishes so varying, that it would be worse than childish in me to disturb myself for this fresh fancy." "It is of little consequence to me, madame, that you are or are not annoyed, so that you obey my desire." "Obey! the word is somewhat harsh, sir." "It is just." "Then, sir, it is a command?" "A command." "If I were inclined to submit to it, at least you must confess it is somewhat tyrannical." "I should be very indulgent to do so." "Indulgent! And what have you to reproach me with, sir? Have I not been indulgent a thousand times to your fits and gusts of passion? have I not carefully concealed them from all the world? Have you not repeated to me a hundred times, that, although we lived beneath the same roof, I was free in all my actions? It is true that soon after you came all wretched to recall your words. But again I say, sir, I am wrong to reply to you; I am, no doubt, at this moment, like yourself, a dupe to your aberration of mind." "I am mad, then, am I, as my whims seem to announce? Ah, it has not been your fault that these appearances, of which you were the sole cause, which I affected from compassion to you (you do not deserve that I should explain to you my meaning)--it has not been your fault, I repeat, that these appearances should indeed become reality! But I believed that, enlightened, at least, by these alternations of passion and horror----" "Horror!" exclaimed the princess. "Horror!" repeated the prince, coldly,--"I believed that you would have understood the enormity of your crimes, and the endurance of my infatuation which survived them. But, no; not even that! Happily for me at this moment that infatuation is over; your last blow has destroyed it. But the horror still endures--do you mark me?--the horror, I say----" "I hear you--_mon Dieu!_--but I understand you not." "I have loved you, you bear my name--thus this abominable secret shall remain buried between us. Go, then, in Heaven's name, depart, and thank me on your knees for being as forbearing as I am!" Madame de Hansfeld looked at her husband with alarm; she had nothing to reproach herself with except her love for De Morville, and that love did not deserve the fearful reproaches with which the prince overwhelmed her. Yet he seemed perfectly in his senses; there was nothing wild in his look or his demeanour. Wishing to see if he would make any allusion to her love for De Morville, which by some inexplicable chance M. de Hansfeld might have detected, she said to him,--