French Decadent Tales (Oxford World's Classics) by Unknown

despair! I know this child through and through. She knows nothing of the world or of sin… Of all the girls in my confession, she is certainly the one I would vouch for most readily before God. That is all I can tell you! We priests are the doctors of the soul, and we are charged to deliver them of all their burdens with hands that neither wound nor stain. And so, proceeding with the utmost caution, I asked her, I questioned her, I pressed her, but once the despairing child had uttered the word, and confessed her fault, which she calls a hellish crime (the poor girl thinks she is damned!)—she said nothing more and retreated into a stubborn silence which she would not break except to beg me to come and see you, Madame, to tell you of her crime—“for my mother will have to know,” she said, “and I will never have the strength to tell her!”’
    ‘ “I listened to the old priest of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and I scarcely need describe the mixture of astonishment and anguish his words caused me! Like him, and even more than him, I was convinced of the innocence of my daughter; but often the innocent fall, even through their own innocence… And what she had said to her confessor was not impossible!… She was only thirteen, but she had become a woman, and her precocity had in fact frightened me… I was seized with an access of curiosity.
    ‘ “ ‘I want to know and I shall know everything!’ I burst out to the poor old man, who stood before me, patting his hat, speechless with embarrasment.—‘Leave me now, Father. She would not speak to you. But I am sure she will tell me everything… I shall drag everything out of her, and then we shall understand what is at present beyond our understanding!’
    ‘ “Upon which the priest left—and no sooner had he gone than I went up to my daughter’s room, too impatient to ask her to come down and wait for her.
    ‘ “I found her before the crucifix above her bed, not kneeling, but prostrated, and pale as death. Her eyes were dry, but red, like eyes that have been crying heavily. I took her in my arms, sat her down next to me, then on my knee, and I told her that I could not believe what her confessor had just told me.
    ‘ “But she interrupted me to assure me, with anguish in her voice and expression, that what he had said was indeed true. And then, increasingly alarmed and amazed, I asked her for the name of the man who…
    ‘ “I did not finish… What a terrible moment! She buried her head and face in my shoulder… but I could see the back of her neck, which was burning scarlet, and I could feel her shuddering. And then she became stubbornly silent, as she had with the priest. It was a wall.
    ‘ “ ‘It must be someone very unworthy of you, since you seem so ashamed?’ I said, trying to provoke her into speaking, since I knew her to be proud.
    ‘ “But she stayed silent, her head buried in my shoulder. This went on for what seemed like an eternity, when she said suddenly, without changing position: ‘Promise me that you’ll forgive me, mother.’
    ‘ “I swore that I would, at the risk of perjuring myself a hundred times over; not that I cared a whit! I was boiling over withimpatience… I thought my brain was going to come bursting out of my head…
    ‘ “ ‘In that case, it was Monsieur de Ravila!’ she whispered, and stayed where she was, in my arms.
    ‘ “Oh, when she said that name, Amédée! I felt I had been punished with a single blow to the heart, for the great misdemeanour of my life. You are a man so terrible where women are concerned, and rack me with so many jealousies, that the horrible ‘and why not?’—when one comes to doubt the man one loves—arose in me… But I had the strength to hide my feelings from the cruel child, who must have sensed that her mother was in love.
    ‘ “ ‘Monsieur de Ravila!’ I exclaimed, with a voice that I felt must betray me completely—‘but you never even speak to him!—You avoid