France -- History -- Wars of the Vendée, 1793-1832 -- Fiction; Marriage -- Fiction
Certainly Camille was not the sort of nature that detracts, but the
reason he avoided Raynal’s name was simply that his whole internal
battle was to forget such a man existed. From this dream he was rudely
awakened every hour since he joined the family, and the wound his
self-deceiving heart would fain have skinned over, was torn open. But
worse than this was the torture of being tantalized. He was in company
with Josephine, but never alone. Even if she left the room for an
instant, Rose accompanied her and returned with her. Camille at last
began to comprehend that Josephine had decided there should be no
private interviews between her and him. Thus, not only the shadow of the
absent Raynal stood between them, but her mother and sister in person,
and worst of all, her own will. He called her a cold-blooded fiend in
his rage. Then the thought of all her tenderness and goodness came to
rebuke him. But even in rebuking it maddened him. “Yes, it is her very
nature to love; but since she can make her heart turn whichever way her
honor bids, she will love her husband; she does not now; but sooner or
later she will. Then she will have children--(he writhed with anguish
and fury at this thought)--loving ties between him and her. He has
everything on his side. I, nothing but memories she will efface from her
heart. Will efface? She must have effaced them, or she could not have
married him.” I know no more pitiable state of mind than to love and
hate the same creature. But when the two feelings are both intense, and
meet in an ardent bosom, such a man would do well to spend a day or two
upon his knees, praying for grace divine. For he who with all his soul
loves and hates one woman is next door to a maniac, and is scarcely
safe an hour together from suicide or even from homicide; this truth the
newspapers tell us, by examples, every month; but are wonderfully little
heeded, because newspapers do not, nor is it their business to, analyze
and dwell upon the internal feelings of the despairing lover, whose mad
and bloody act they record. With such a tempest in his heart did Camille
one day wander into the park. And soon an irresistible attraction drew
him to the side of the stream that flowed along one side of it. He eyed
it gloomily, and wherever the stagnant water indicated a deeper pool
than usual he stopped, and looked, and thought, “How calm and peaceful
you are!”
He sat down at last by the water-side, his eyes bent on a calm, green
pool.
It looked very peaceful; and it could give peace. He thought, oh! what
a blessing; to be quit of rage, jealousy, despair, and life, all in a
minute!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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