You must already be disenchanted with this
impostor; these walls are not worthy to be hallowed by your beauty!
Shall that form be clasped in the arms of a base-born peasant? Beloved,
beautiful Pauline! fly with me--my carriage waits without--I will bear
you to a home more meet for your reception. Wealth, luxury, station--all
shall yet be yours. I forget your past disdain--I remember only your
beauty and my unconquerable love!

Pauline. Sir! leave this house--it is humble: but a husband's roof,
however lowly, is, in the eyes of God and man, the temple of a wife's
honor! Know that I would rather starve--yes--with him who has betrayed
me, than accept your lawful hand, even were you the prince whose name he
bore.--Go.

Beau. What! is not your pride humbled yet?

Pauline. Sir, what was pride in prosperity in affliction becomes virtue.

Beau. Look round: these rugged floors--these homely walls--this
wretched struggle of poverty for comfort--think of this! and contrast
with such a picture the refinement, the luxury, the pomp, that the
wealthiest gentleman of Lyons offers to the loveliest lady. Ah, hear me!

Pauline. Oh! my father!--why did I leave you?--why am I thus friendless?
Sir, you see before you a betrayed, injured, miserable woman!--respect
her anguish.

[MELNOTTE opens the door silently, and pauses at the threshold.

Beau. No! let me rather thus console it; let me snatch from those lips
one breath of that fragrance which never should be wasted on the low
churl thy husband.

Pauline. Help! Claude!--Claude!--Have I no protector?'

Beau. Be silent! [showing a pistol.] See, I do not come unprepared even
for violence. I will brave all things--thy husband and all his race--
for thy sake. Thus, then, I clasp thee!

Mel. [dashing him to the other end of the stage]. Pauline--look up,
Pauline! thou art safe.

Beau. [levelling his pistol]. Dare you thus insult a man of my birth,
ruffian?

Pauline. Oh, spare him--spare my husband!--Beauseant--Claude--no--no
[faints].

Mel. Miserable trickster! shame upon you! brave devices to terrify a
woman! Coward!--you tremble--you have outraged the laws--you know that
your weapon is harmless--you have the courage of the mountebank, not the
bravo!--Pauline, there is no danger.

Beau. I wish thou wert a gentleman--as it is, thou art beneath me.--
Good day, and a happy honeymoon.--[Aside.] I will not die till I am
avenged. [Exit.

Mel. I hold her in these arms--the last