Page:Marquis de Sade - Adelaide of Brunswick.djvu/97

 "But he told me, Milady, that he had tried all the other means."

"There is one which he rejects entirely."

"What is that, Milady?"

"The one of trying to please. Tell him for me, I beg you, that he will succeed in that only by sending me back to Frankfort, and by placing me again in the situation in which he found me."

"Your house and your servants need not cause you any uneasiness, Milady. My master has handled all that; you no longer have a house in Frankfort. All your expenses have been paid and your trunks are here."

"And who has given him the right, I beg of you, to arrange my affairs? Does he imagine that he can win me by such vile procedures? Tell him, sir, that he will know in a few days whether I was born to receive such treatment. He will be extremely sorry when he finds out the name of the woman he is humiliating."

"I believe that his highness has for you, Milady, all the feelings of respect and love which can exist in a heart like this. But he has also the bitter feeling of being paid by ingratitude."

"I cannot be ungrateful to him, since I neither ask for nor accept his favors."

"The margrave will despair when he learns of your harsh words. Can't you soften them somehow and give him a little hope?"

"Why do you expea me to deceive him?"

"In order to be a little happier."

"Why should my happiness depend on him? Did he have the right to interrupt my enjoyment of life?"

"Oh, Milady," said the gentleman with enthusiasm which he did not try to hide, "what a wonderful person you are! How happy a man would be who could inspire in you some less severe sentiments."

Adelaide, realizing immediately that this young man could be very useful to her, smiled at him graciously and assured him that the efforts he was making for another were entirely useless; her heart could not be released from the bonds which already bound it. She would only change her opinion about