l as if
resentment to one so helpless, desertion of one who must fall without
the support of a friendly hand, were a selfish cruelty. It seems to me
as if I were dragged towards a precipice by a sickly child clinging to
my robe.

"But in this last conversation with him, his language in regard to
subjects I hold most sacred drew forth from me words which startled
him, and which may avail to save him from that worst insanity of human
minds,--the mimicry of the Titans who would have dethroned a God to
restore a Chaos. I told him frankly that I had only promised to
share his fate on my faith in his assurance of my power to guide
it heavenward; and that if the opinions he announced were seriously
entertained, and put forth in defiance of heaven itself, we were
separated for ever. I told him how earnestly, in the calamities of the
time, my own soul had sought to take refuge in thoughts and hopes beyond
the earth; and how deeply many a sentiment that in former days passed
by me with a smile in the light talk of the salons, now shocked me as
an outrage on the reverence which the mortal child owes to the Divine
Father. I owned to him how much of comfort, of sustainment, of thought
and aspiration, elevated beyond the sphere of Art in which I had
hitherto sought the purest air, the loftiest goal, I owed to intercourse
with minds like those of the Abbe de Vertpre; and how painfully I felt
as if I were guilty of ingratitude when he compelled me to listen to
insults on those whom I recognised as benefactors.

"I wished to speak sternly; but it is my great misfortune, my prevalent
weakness, that I cannot be stern when I ought to be. It is with me in
life as in art. I never could on the stage have taken the part of a
Norma or a Medea. If I attempt in fiction a character which deserves
condemnation, I am untrue to poetic justice. I cannot condemn and
execute; I can but compassionate and pardon the creature I myself have
created. I was never in the real world stern but to one; and then, alas!
it was because I loved where I could no longer love with honour; and I,
knowing my weakness, had terror lest I should yield.

"So Gustave did not comprehend from my voice, my manner, how gravely I
was in earnest. But, himself softened, affected to tears, he confessed
his own faults--ceased to argue in order to praise; and--and--uttering
protestations seemingly the most sincere, he left me bound to him
still--bound to him still--woe is me!"

It