"Madame de Bonfons must be very ill to leave her husband entirely
alone. Poor woman! Is she likely to get well? What is it? Something
gastric? A cancer?"--"She has grown perfectly yellow. She ought to
consult some celebrated doctor in Paris."--"How can she be happy
without a child? They say she loves her husband; then why not give him
an heir?--in his position, too!"--"Do you know, it is really dreadful!
If it is the result of mere caprice, it is unpardonable. Poor
president!"
Endowed with the delicate perception which a solitary soul acquires
through constant meditation, through the exquisite clear-sightedness
with which a mind aloof from life fastens on all that falls within its
sphere, Eugenie, taught by suffering and by her later education to
divine thought, knew well that the president desired her death that he
might step into possession of their immense fortune, augmented by the
property of his uncle the notary and his uncle the abbe, whom it had
lately pleased God to call to himself. The poor solitary pitied the
president. Providence avenged her for the calculations and the
indifference of a husband who respected the hopeless passion on which
she spent her life because it was his surest safeguard. To give life
to a child would give death to his hopes,--the hopes of selfishness,
the joys of ambition, which the president cherished as he looked into
the future.
God thus flung piles of gold upon this prisoner to whom gold was a
matter of indifference, who longed for heaven, who lived, pious and
good, in holy thoughts, succoring the unfortunate in secret, and never
wearying of such deeds.
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