Answer me, then. You do not really look
upon a marriage between yourself and Bernard Mauprat as possible?"
"How should that which is inevitable be impossible?" said Edmee. "There
is nothing more possible than throwing one's self into the river;
nothing more possible than surrendering one's self to misery and
despair; nothing more possible, consequently, than marrying Bernard
Mauprat."
"In any case I will not be the one to celebrate such an absurd and
deplorable union," cried the abbe. "You, the wife and the slave of this
Hamstringer! Edmee, you said just now that you would no more endure the
violence of a lover than a husband's blow."
"You think the he would beat me?"
"If he did not kill you."
"Oh, no," she replied, in a resolute tone, with a wave of the knife, "I
would kill him first. When Mauprat meets Mauprat . . .!"
"You can laugh, Edmee? O my God! you can laugh at the thought of such
a match! But, even if this man had some affection and esteem for you,
think how impossible it would be for you to have anything in common;
think of the coarseness of his ideas, the vulgarity of his speech. The
heart rises in disgust at the idea of such a union. Good God! In what
language would you speak to him?"
Once more I was on the point of rising and falling on my panegyrist; but
I overcame my rage. Edmee began to speak, and I was all ears again.
"I know very well that at the end of three or four days I should have
nothing better to do than cut my own throat; but since sooner or later
it must come to that, why should I not go forward to the inevitable
hour? I confess that I shall be sorry to leave life.
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