What strange ideas, what
unnumbered obstacles, they put in my head. There was good on one side
and evil on the other: things which one might do, and again that which
one should never do; in short, such a complication of matters, it was
enough to make one wild. They were all falsehoods: there was no truth
in any of them. The only real happiness is to live to love the one
who loves you, and to obey the promptings of the heart. You are the
personification of fortune, of beauty, and of youth, my dear Seigneur;
my only pleasure is in you. I give myself to you freely, and you may do
with me what you wish."
She rejoiced in this breaking-out of all the hereditary tendencies of
her nature, which she thought had died within her. Sounds of distant
music excited her. She saw as it were their royal departure: this son of
a prince carrying her away as in a fairy-tale, and making her queen
of some imaginary realm; and she was ready to follow him with her arms
clasped around his neck, her head upon his breast, with such a trembling
from intense feeling that her whole body grew weak from happiness. To be
alone together, just they two, to abandon themselves to the galloping
of horses, to flee away, and to disappear in each other's arms.
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