"You love another," said he at length, "another! And your grandmother
does not know it. Claire, you can only have chosen a man worthy of your
love. How is it the marchioness does not receive him?"
"There are certain obstacles," murmured Claire, "obstacles which perhaps
we may never be able to remove; but a girl like me can love but once.
She marries him she loves, or she belongs to heaven!"
"Certain obstacles!" said M. Daburon in a hollow voice. "You love a man,
he knows it, and he is stopped by obstacles?"
"I am poor," answered Mademoiselle d'Arlange, "and his family is
immensely rich. His father is cruel, inexorable."
"His father," cried the magistrate, with a bitterness he did not dream
of hiding, "his father, his family, and that withholds him! You are
poor, he is rich, and that stops him! And yet he knows you love him!
Ah! why am I not in his place? and why have I not the entire universe
against me? What sacrifice can compare with love? such as I understand
it. Nay, would it be a sacrifice? That which appears most so, is it not
really an immense joy? To suffer, to struggle, to wait, to hope always,
to devote oneself entirely to another; that is my idea of love.
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