"
Armand de Montriveau stayed with her till two o'clock in the
morning. From that moment this woman, whom he loved, was neither
a duchess nor a Navarreins; Antoinette, in her disguises, had
gone so far as to appear to be a woman. On that most blissful
evening, the sweetest prelude ever played by a Parisienne to what
the world calls "a slip"; in spite of all her affectations of a
coyness which she did not feel, the General saw all maidenly
beauty in her. He had some excuse for believing that so many
storms of caprice had been but clouds covering a heavenly soul;
that these must be lifted one by one like the veils that hid her
divine loveliness. The Duchess became, for him, the most simple
and girlish mistress; she was the one woman in the world for him;
and he went away quite happy in that at last he had brought her
to give him such pledges of love, that it seemed to him
impossible but that he should be but her husband henceforth in
secret, her choice sanctioned by Heaven.
Armand went slowly home, turning this thought in his mind with
the impartiality of a man who is conscious of all the
responsibilities that love lays on him while he tastes the
sweetness of its joys. He went along the Quais to see the widest
possible space of sky; his heart had grown in him; he would fain
have had the bounds of the firmament and of earth enlarged. It
seemed to him that his lungs drew an ampler breath. In the course
of his self-examination, as he walked, he vowed to love this woman
so devoutly, that every day of her life she should find absolution
for her sins against society in unfailing happiness.
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