Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 1.djvu/239

Rh this thought: "Max has loved me—he loves me still!" A moment she had been able to believe it; but now she was stripped even of her memories, the sole possession which remained to her in the world.

While Arsène abandoned herself to her bitter reflections, Madame de Piennes demonstrated to her with animation the necessity of renouncing for ever what she called her criminal errors. A strong conviction blunts the sensibilities; and as a surgeon applies steel and cautery to a wound, without heeding the cries of the patient, so Madame de Piennes pursued her task with pitiless firmness. She told her that that period of happiness in which poor Arsène took refuge in order to escape from herself, was a period of crime and shame for which she was paying the just penalty. These illusions, it was necessary to detest, and to banish them from her heart; the man whom she looked upon as her protector, and almost a tutelary genius, should no longer be to her eyes but a pernicious accomplice, a seducer from whom she should flee for ever.

That word "seducer," of which Madame de Piennes was not able to feel the ridiculousness, almost caused Arsène to smile in the midst of her tears; but her worthy protectress failed to observe it. She continued imperturbably her