"I understand that, but I do not call weakness and fear goodness. To my mind there is no true goodness without courage, dignity and, above all, devotion to duty. If I esteem you to the point of saying to you, without suspicion and without shame, that I love you, Emile, it is because I know that you are great in heart and mind; it is because you pity the unfortunate and think only of assisting them, because you despise nobody, because you suffer when others suffer, because you would gladly give everything that belongs to you, even your blood, to relieve the poor and the abandoned. That is what I understood about you as soon as you talked before me and with me; and that is why I said to myself: This heart answers mine; these noble thoughts exalt my soul and confirm me in all that I have thought; I detect in this mind, which impresses me and charms me, a light which I am compelled to follow and which guides me toward God himself. That is why, Emile, I felt neither terror nor remorse in yielding to the inclination to love you. It seemed to me that I was performing a duty; and I have not changed my opinion after reading your father's mocking words concerning you." "Dear Gilberte, you know my heart and my thought; but your adorable goodness, your divine affection ascribe to me as a great merit sentiments which seem to me so natural and so forced upon men by the instinct God has implanted in them, that I should blush not to have them. And yet these sentiments, which must appear in the same light to you, since you yourself entertain them with such innocence and simplicity, are spurned by many people and derided as dangerous errors. There are some who hate and despise them because they haven't them. There are others who, by a strange anomaly, have them to a certain extent, but cannot tolerate the logical deduction from them and their inevitable consequences. Heaven help me! I fear that I cannot explain myself clearly." "Yes, yes, I understand you. Janille is good like God himself, and, through ignorance or prejudice, that perfect friend rejects my ideas of equality, and tries to convince me that I can love and pity and help the unfortunate without ceasing to think that they are naturally inferior to me." "Well, my noble-hearted Gilberte, my father has the same prejudices as Janille, from another point of view. While she believes that birth creates a claim to power, he is persuaded that skill, strength and energy create a claim to wealth, and that it is the duty of acquired wealth to go on adding to itself forever, at any cost, and to pursue its way into the future, never allowing the weak to be happy and free." "Why, that is horrible!" cried Gilberte, ingenuously.