She evoked the terrors of religion. Never
did Father of the Church, however eloquent, plead the cause of
God better than the Duchess. Never was the wrath of the Most
High better justified than by her voice. She used no preacher's
commonplaces, no rhetorical amplifications. No. She had a
"pulpit-tremor" of her own. To Armand's most passionate
entreaty, she replied with a tearful gaze, and a gesture in which
a terrible plenitude of emotion found expression. She stopped
his mouth with an appeal for mercy. She would not hear another
word; if she did, she must succumb; and better death than
criminal happiness.
"Is it nothing to disobey God?" she asked him, recovering a
voice grown faint in the crises of inward struggles, through
which the fair actress appeared to find it hard to preserve her
self-control. "I would sacrifice society, I would give up the
whole world for you, gladly; but it is very selfish of you to ask
my whole after-life of me for a moment of pleasure. Come, now!
are you not happy?" she added, holding out her hand; and
certainly in her careless toilette the sight of her afforded
consolations to her lover, who made the most of them.
Sometimes from policy, to keep her hold on a man whose ardent
passion gave her emotions unknown before, sometimes in weakness,
she suffered him to snatch a swift kiss; and immediately, in
feigned terror, she flushed red and exiled Armand from the sofa
so soon as the sofa became dangerous ground.
"Your joys are sins for me to expiate, Armand; they are paid for
by penitence and remorse," she cried.
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