Yes, I will give my life to seek him wherever he may be, to meet him,
seduce him, make him mine! If I do not have that man, who dared to
despise me, at my feet humble and submissive, if I do not make him my
lackey and my slave, I shall indeed be base; I shall not be a woman; I
shall not be myself."
The house which Corentin now hired for Mademoiselle de Verneuil
offered many gratifications to the innate love of luxury and elegance
that was part of this girl. The capricious creature took possession of
it with regal composure, as of a thing which already belonged to her;
she appropriated the furniture and arranged it with intuitive
sympathy, as though she had known it all her life. This is a vulgar
detail, but one that is not unimportant in sketching the character of
so exceptional a person. She seemed to have been already familiarized
in a dream with the house in which she now lived on her hatred as she
might have lived on her love.
"At least," she said to herself, "I did not rouse insulting pity in
him; I do not owe him my life. Oh, my first, my last, my only love!
what an end to it!" She sprang upon Francine, who was terrified. "Do
you love a man? Oh, yes, yes, I remember; you do. I am glad I have a
woman here who can understand me. Ah, my poor Francette, man is a
miserable being. Ha! he said he loved me, and his love could not bear
the slightest test! But I,--if all men had accused him I would have
defended him; if the universe rejected him my soul should have been
his refuge.
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