"I blame myself for nothing. What I have done, I would do again. I have made myself anathema for my country's sake. I am accursed. I have put myself outside humanity; I shall never re-enter its pale. No, the great task is not finished. Oh! clemency, forgiveness!--Do the traitors forgive? Are the conspirators clement? scoundrels, parricides multiply unceasingly; they spring up from underground, they swarm in from all our frontiers,--young men, who would have done better to perish with our armies, old men, children, women, with every mark of innocence, purity, and grace. They are offered up a sacrifice,--and more victims are ready for the knife!... You can see, Elodie, I must needs renounce love, renounce all joy, all sweetness of life, renounce life itself." He fell silent. Born to taste tranquil joys, Elodie not for the first time was appalled to find, under the tragic kisses of a lover like Evariste, her voluptuous transports blended with images of horror and bloodshed; she offered no reply. To Evariste the girl's silence was as a draught of a bitter chalice. "Yes, you can see, Elodie, we are on a precipice; our deeds devour us. Our days, our hours are years. I shall soon have lived a century. Look at this brow! Is it a lover's? Love!..." "Evariste, you are mine, I will not let you go; I will not give you back your freedom." She was speaking in the language of sacrifice. He felt it; she felt it herself. "Will you be able, Elodie, one day to bear witness that I lived faithful to my duty, that my heart was upright and my soul unsullied, that I knew no passion but the public good; that I was born to feel and love? Will you say: 'He did his duty'? But no! You will not say it and I do not ask you to say it. Perish my memory! My glory is in my own heart; shame beleaguers me about. If you love me, never speak my name; eternal silence is best." A child of eight or nine, trundling its hoop, ran just then between Gamelin's legs. He lifted the boy suddenly in his arms: "Child, you will grow up free, happy, and you will owe it to the infamous Gamelin. I am ferocious, that you may be happy. I am cruel, that you may be kind; I am pitiless, that to-morrow all Frenchmen may embrace with tears of joy." He pressed the child to his breast. "Little one, when you are a man, you will owe your happiness, your innocence to me; and, if ever you hear my name uttered, you will execrate it." Then he put down the child, which ran away in terror to cling to its mother's skirts, who had hurried up to the rescue. The young mother, who was pretty and charming in her aristocratic grace, with her gown of white lawn, carried off the boy with a haughty look. Gamelin turned his eyes on Elodie: "I have held the child in my arms; perhaps I shall send the mother to the guillotine,"--and he walked away with long strides under the ordered trees.