Belle-Rose — page 206: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

TWO WOMEN’S HEARTS. 195 How can I do it? Speak, and if honor permits me, I am ready.”’ ‘‘You have been presented to the king, have you not?”’ continued Madame de Chateaufort, rapidly. ‘*I was presented to him at Charleroi by Monsieur d’Al- bergotti.’”’ : ‘‘His Majesty, they say, holds the marquis in high es- teem.’’ ‘His Majesty has given him the assurance of it by Sie giving him the government of a considerable place.”’ “Well, madame, Belle-Rose’s life is in the hands of the king, and he alone can snatch it from the hands of Mon- sieur de Louvois. Run to Lille and obtain his intervention between Belle-Rose and the minister. ’”’ Suzanne felt her heart breaking. She saw Belle-Rose’s pardon dependent upon her decision and remained mute. “He is at the Bastile! what are you waiting for, madame?’’ said Genevieve. ‘‘Monsieur d’Albergotti is here, ’ said Suzanne, in a dying voice. | ‘*He loves you, and you hesitate !’’ ‘It is because he loves me that I hesitate!’’ ex- claimed Suzanne; ‘‘I must remain worthy of that love. He himself would repulse me if I left this house where honor detains me. If I were free, I would be near him; married, I remain where my husband is.’’ ‘This, then, is the way you love, my God!’’ exclaimed Genevieve, with hands extended toward heaven. ‘‘If he had loved me as he loves you, | would have forgotten ~everything.’’ ‘*Kach has his heart,’’ said Suzanne; ‘‘God sees us and God judges us.’ “Oh! you have never loved him.’’ ‘‘l have not loved him!’’ exclaimed Suzanne, who was wringing her hands in despair; ‘‘but do you know that since my childhood this heart has had no pulsation which has not been his, that I exist only through his memory, that llove him so profoundly that I should not wish to bring him a life in which the shadow of a fault had passed, a soul which the breath of evil had tarnished. You say that Ido notlove him; he has loved and I have suffered; he has forgotten and I have recollected! I live in my house as in a cloister. I pray and I weep—I am in the world as if I did not exist. My life flows away between God whom linvoke and a sick man whom I console. IL have neither joy, repose, nor contentment. JI have made (a(ey payiicel evoyo) KS (E(@)