Belle-Rose — page 172: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE CONFESSION OF A MAGDALEN. | 161 A child!’ repeated Belle-Rose; “it is with it that my mission is concerned.’’ “Eh!’’ said Genevieve, “‘your mission will be easy. What you wish, I wish. A burning fever riveted me to that bed of suffering,’’ she continted; ‘‘to that bed where I had for my child only kisses bathed in tears. I do not know how long this delirium lasted; my nurse drove every one out of the room; my aunt, steeped in devotion, barely saw me a minute on returning from the chapel of the chateau. I was convalescent when my father returned. ‘“*T bring you a husband, the seigneur of whom I have spoken to you,’ he said to me, before having embraced me, and he presented him to me at once.”’ ‘*It was the Duc de Chateaufort?’’ said Belle-Rose. ‘*Yés, Monsieur d’Assonville had disappeared since the scene in the pavilion. He had believed in my treason; in my turn I believed in his forgetfulness. After a month of hesitation, 1] married the duke. Three days after, I saw Monsieur d’Assonville again; left for dead in a combat in which my father had taken part, he had owed his life to > the charitable cares of miserable peasants, who had found _hinrupon the field of battle. His grief frightened me; his reproaches, at the same time bitter and passionate, melted my heart. He loved me, but Ino longer loved him. We met then inalittle house in the Rue Cassette,. where I had established my nurse. These meetings were turn by turn sweet and bitter to me; for him they were intoxi- eating or terrible. This life became intolerable to me. One day Iinformed him of my desire to break off our relations. Heresisted. He offered to carry me away, to _ quit France, and to go to live at the end of the world with our child. This proposition came too late; I no longer loved him. ‘**You refuse,’ he said to me; ‘well, if Ido not have the mother, I shall at least have the child.’ “This threat reached my heart. My child was my life, my refuge, my hope, my joy. Its smiles lit up my despair. When I was tired of living, I embraced it, and I forgot myself.” “«*My child!’ I exclaimed, and I felt in me all at once that strength and*that energy which had so long slept in the heart-of the virgin. ‘The child belongs to the mother, qd’ Assonvyille had not the time to devote to long researches, and you wish to snatch it from me. It shall not be, I swear it! “The next day the child had Aisa poared: Monsieur EOomicboo cS (E(0)