"Whoever you may be," he said, "you have in your hands the destiny of the noblest boy that I in my old age have ever dared to dream of for my staff and my consolation. I shall die before long, and I shall leave this earth without having known an instant's joy, if I do not leave Emile at peace with himself. Oh! I implore you--you who are destined to exercise so great an influence, for good or evil, over his whole future,--retain on the side of truth that heart which is so worthy to be its sanctuary. You are very young, you do not know yet what a woman's love is in the life of a man like him! You do not know perhaps that it depends upon you to make of him a hero or a dastard, a coward or an apostate. Alas! you probably do not understand the bearing of what I am saying to you now. No, you are too young; the more I look at you, the more like a child you seem to me! Poor young thing, without experience and without strength, you are to determine the future of a noble heart, to break it or ennoble it. Forgive me for saying this; I am deeply moved and I cannot find fitting words. I have no desire either to distress you or to cause you embarrassment; but I am depressed and alarmed, and the more fully I realize your innocence, the more I feel that Emile no longer belongs to me." "Forgive me, monsieur le marquis," said Gilberte, wiping away her tears, "I understand you very well, and although I am in truth very young, I am conscious of my responsibility in God's sight; but I am not in question now, it is not myself whom I wish to defend and justify, but Emile, that noble heart whom you seem to doubt. Oh! have no fear! Emile will lie neither to you, nor his father, nor himself, nor other men. I don't know if I fully understand the importance of his ideas and the depth of yours; but I adore the truth. I am no philosopher, I am too ignorant. But I am pious, I was brought up in the precepts of the Gospel, and I cannot interpret them in a different sense from that Emile gives to them. I understand that his father, who also invokes the Gospel, by the way, when the fancy strikes him, wishes him to be false to the faith of the Gospel, and if I believed that Emile was capable of consenting, I should blush for having been so grossly misled as to love a man without intelligence and conscience; but I am not so unfortunate as that. Emile will be equal to renouncing me, if need be, rather than renounce his own manhood; and as for myself, I shall know how to be brave, if at times his courage seems to waver. But I am not afraid of it; I know that he suffers, and I suffer too; but I will be worthy of his affection, as he is worthy of yours, and God will help us to bear everything, for He does not abandon those who suffer for love of Him and for the glory of His name!" "Well said!" exclaimed the carpenter; "I wish I could talk like that. But no matter, I think as she does, and the good Lord gives me as much credit."