"No one can be like
God. Exaggeration is out of place with true love; you had not a pure
and genuine love for your idol. If you had undergone the conversion you
boast of having felt, you would have acquired the virtues which are
a part of womanhood; you would have known the charm of chastity,
the refinements of modesty, the two virtues that are the glory of a
maiden.--You do not love."

Esther's gesture of horror was seen by the priest, but it had no effect
on the impassibility of her confessor.

"Yes; for you love him for yourself and not for himself, for the
temporal enjoyments that delight you, and not for love itself. If he has
thus taken possession of you, you cannot have felt that sacred thrill
that is inspired by a being on whom God has set the seal of the most
adorable perfections. Has it never occurred to you that you would
degrade him by your past impurity, that you would corrupt a child by
the overpowering seductions which earned you your nickname glorious in
infamy? You have been illogical with yourself, and your passion of a
day----"

"Of a day?" she repeated, raising her eyes.

"By what other name can you call a love that is not eternal, that does
not unite us in the future life of the Christian, to the being we love?"

"Ah, I will be a Catholic!" she cried in a hollow, vehement tone, that
would have earned her the mercy of the Lord.

"Can a girl who has received neither the baptism of the Church nor that
of knowledge; who can neither read, nor write, nor pray; who cannot
take a step without the stones in the street rising up to accuse her;
noteworthy only for the fugitive gift of beauty which sickness may
destroy to-morrow; can such a vile, degraded creature, fully aware too
of her degradation--for if you had been ignorant of it and less devoted,
you would have been more excusable--can the intended victim to suicide
and hell hope to be the wife of Lucien de Rubempre?"

Every word was a poniard thrust piercing the depths of her heart. At
every word the louder sobs and abundant tears of the desperate girl
showed the power with which light had flashed upon an intelligence as
pure as that of a savage, upon a soul at length aroused, upon a nature
over which depravity had laid a sheet of foul ice now thawed in the
sunshine of faith.

"Why did I not die!" was the only thought that found utterance in the
midst of a torrent of ideas that racked and ravaged her brain.

"My daughter," said the terrible j