Page:MaryTudorHugo.djvu/71

 and speak to her. Oh! do you know this: is it for me that she comes or for Fabiani?

Joshua.I know that Fabiani is surely to be beheaded to-day and you to-morrow, and I confess that since I have known it, Gilbert, I have been as one mad. The scaffold has put Jane out of my mind. Your death—

Gilbert.My death! What mean you by that word? My death is to have Jane not love me. From the day that she ceased to love me, I have been dead. Oh, yes, Joshua, veritably dead. What survives of me since then is not worth the trouble they will take with me to-morrow. Look you, you can form no idea of what it is to be a man who loves! If anyone had said to me two months since: "Jane, your pure and spotless Jane, your love, your pride, your lily, your treasure,—Jane will give herself to another man—will you have aught of her afterward?" I would have said: "No, I'll have nought of her! rather, a thousand times, death for her and for me!" and I would have trampled under my feet the man who spoke to me so.—But now, I would have her! To-day, you say, Jane is no longer the stainless Jane who had all my adoration, the Jane whose brow I scarcely dared touch with my lips; Jane has given herself to another, a knave—I know it, but it matters not to me—I love her! My heart is broken, but I love her! I would kiss the hem of her robe and would ask her pardon if she were angry with me; if she were in the gutter with the women who belong there, I would lift her up and take her to my heart, Joshua!—Joshua, I would give—not a hundred years of my life, since I have but one day more, but the eternity I shall have to-morrow,—to see her smile at me once again,