SARA.

My virtue? Do not say that word! Once it sounded sweet to me, but now a
terrible thunder rolls in it!

MELLEFONT.

What? Must he who is to be virtuous, never have committed a trespass?
Has a single error such fatal effect that it can annihilate a whole
course of blameless years? If so, no one is virtuous; virtue is then a
chimera, which disperses in the air, when one thinks that one grasps it
most firmly; if so, there is no Wise Being who suits our duties to
our strength; if so, there is----I am frightened at the terrible
conclusions in which your despondency must involve you. No, Sara, you
are still the virtuous Sara that you were before your unfortunate
acquaintance with me. If you look upon yourself with such cruel eyes,
with what eyes must you regard me!

SARA.

With the eyes of love, Mellefont!

MELLEFONT.

I implore you, then, on my knees I implore you for the sake of this
love, this generous love which overlooks all my unworthiness, to calm
yourself! Have patience for a few days longer!

SARA.

A few days! How long even a single day is!

MELLEFONT.

Cursed bequest! Cursed nonsense of a dying cousin, who would only leave
me his fortune on the condition that I should give my hand to a
relation who hates me as much as I hate her! To you, inhuman tyrants of
our freedom, be imputed all the misfortune, all the sin, into which
your compulsion forces us. Could I but dispense with this degrading
inheritance. As long as my father's fortune sufficed for my
maintenance, I always scorned it, and did not even think it worthy of
mentioning. But now, now, when I should like to possess all the
treasures of the world only to lay them at the feet of my Sara, now,
when I must contrive at least to let her appear in the world as befits
her station, now I must have recourse to it.

SARA.

Which probably will not be successful after all.

MELLEFONT.

You always forbode the worst. No, the lady whom this also concerns is
not disinclined to enter into a sort of agreement with me. The fortune
is to be divided, and as she cannot enjoy the whole with me, she is
willing to let me buy my liberty with half of it. I am every hour
expecting the final intelligence, the delay of which