impossible. This adventure of Roche-Mauprat must be looked upon only
as an evil dream. We both had a nightmare in those hours of horror; but
it is time for us to awake; we cannot remain paralyzed with fear like
children. You have only one course open to you, and that I have already
pointed out."

"But, abbe, it is the one which I hold the most impossible of all. I
have sworn by everything that is most sacred in the universe and the
human heart."

"An oath extorted by threats and violence is binding on none; even human
laws decree this. Divine laws, especially in a case of this nature,
absolve the human conscience beyond a doubt. If you were orthodox, I
would go to Rome--yes, I would go on foot--to get you absolved from so
rash a vow; but you are not a submissive child of the Pope, Edmee--nor
am I."

"You wish me, then, to perjure myself?"

"Your soul would not be perjured."

"My soul would! I took an oath with a full knowledge of what I was doing
and at a time when I might have killed myself on the spot; for in my
hand I had a knife three times as large as this. But I wanted to live;
above all, I wanted to see my father again and kiss him. To put an end
to the agony which my disappearance must have caused him, I would have
bartered more than my life, I would have bartered my immortal soul.
Since then, too, as I told you last night, I have renewed my vow, and
of my own free-will, moreover; for there was a wall between my amiable
_fiance_ and myself."

"How could you have been so imprudent, Edmee? Here again I fail to
understand you."

"That I can quite believe, for I do not understand myself," said Edmee,
with a peculiar expression.

"My dear child, you must open your hear to me freely. I am the only
person here who can advise you, since I am the only one to whom you can
tell everything under the seal of a friendship as sacred as the secrecy
of Catholic confession can be. 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! Ed