Moths by Ouida — page 345: what you’re looking at

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

MOTHS. ) 841. All that there had been of manliness in Sergius Zouroff’s nature resisted‘her still in this thing that she sought; he still had a faith in his wife that hisanger against her did not change ; in his eyes Vere was Pan incarnate, and he could have laughed aloud in the face of suspicion. To ruin by open doubt and calumnious ac- cusations a creature he knew to be sinless, seemed to him so vile that he could not bring himself to do an act so base. He sent her into captivity, and he kept her there without mercy, but to hem her in with falsehood, to dishonor her by af- fected belief in her dishonor, was a lower deep than he could stoop to, even at the bidding of his mistress. That her solitude was the sharpest and most terrible form of temptation he knew well, and he exposed her to it ruthlessly, will ing she should fall, if to fall she chose. But whilst she was inno- cent, toassume and assert her guilty was what he would not do. Nay, there were even times when the fatal drug of Jeanne de Sonnaz’s presence was not on him, that he himself realized that he was a madman, who cast away the waters of life for a draught of poison, a jewel for a stone. But he thrust aside the thought as it arose. He had surren. dered himself to the will of his mistress. He had put his wife away forever. : One day, when the snow was falling, a traveler reached the gates of Szarisla. | | He was wrapped in fur from head to foot; he wished to see the Princess Zouroff. ‘‘No one sees her,” answered the guardian of the gates; ‘‘it is the prince's order.” ‘But Iam a friend: will you not take my name to her?” ‘‘T will not. No one enters: it is the prince’s order.” To the entreaties of the stranger, and to his gold, the custodian of the entrance-way, was obdurate. In his boyhood he had felt the knout, and he dreaded his master. The stranger went away. The next day was the Immaculate Conception, At Szarisla the Catholic religion was permitted by a special concession of a French princess Zouroff, and its functions still allowed by her descendants. There was no other church for the peasants than that which was part of the great buildin, once the monastery of Szarisla. They all flocked to it upon holy days. It was somber and ill lit, but gorgeous in Byzantine color and taste from the piety of dead Zouroff princes. The peasantry went over the snow through its doors; the stranger went with them; the mistress of Szarisla was at the midday mass as well as the household. In the stillness, after the elevation of the host, a voice arose and sang the Salutaris Hostia. A warmth like the glow of summer ran through all the veins of Vere; she trembled; her face was lifted for one moment, then she dropped it once more on her hands. The peasants and the household, awe-struck and amazed, listen-_ ed with rapt wonder to what they thought was the song of © (e(@ ) comicboo ‘S