ll, hint and raillery flew thick, and still I gathered that while M.
Paul should be absent, working for others, these others, not quite
ungrateful, would guard for him the treasure he left in Europe. Let him
bring them an Indian fortune: they would give him in return a young
bride and a rich inheritance. As for the saintly consecration, the vow
of constancy, that was forgotten: the blooming and charming Present
prevailed over the Past; and, at length, his nun was indeed buried.

Thus it must be. The revelation was indeed come. Presentiment had not
been mistaken in her impulse: there is a kind of presentiment which
never _is_ mistaken; it was I who had for a moment miscalculated; not
seeing the true bearing of the oracle, I had thought she muttered of
vision when, in truth, her prediction touched reality.

I might have paused longer upon what I saw; I might have deliberated
ere I drew inferences. Some, perhaps, would have held the premises
doubtful, the proofs insufficient; some slow sceptics would have
incredulously examined ere they conclusively accepted the project of a
marriage between a poor and unselfish man of forty, and his wealthy
ward of eighteen; but far from me such shifts and palliatives, far from
me such temporary evasion of the actual, such coward fleeing from the
dread, the swift-footed, the all-overtaking Fact, such feeble suspense
of submission to her the sole sovereign, such paltering and faltering
resistance to the Power whose errand is to march conquering and to
conquer, such traitor defection from the TRUTH.

No. I hastened to accept the whole plan. I extended my grasp and took
it all in. I gathered it to me with a sort of rage of haste, and folded
it round me, as the soldier struck on the field folds his colours about
his breast. I invoked Conviction to nail upon me the certainty,
abhorred while embraced, to fix it with the strongest spikes her
strongest strokes could drive; and when the iron had entered well my
soul, I stood up, as I thought, renovated.

In my infatuation, I said, "Truth, you are a good mistress to your
faithful servants! While a Lie pressed me, how I suffered! Even when
the Falsehood was still sweet, still flattering to the fancy, and warm
to the feelings, it wasted me with hourly torment. The persuasion that
affection was won could not be divorced from the dread that, by another
turn of the wheel, it might be lost. Truth stripped away Falsehood, and
Flattery, and Expectancy,