Gil Blas, Alain-René Lesage [best romance ebooks .txt] 📗

“At this suggestion the daughter of Leontio, doing violence to her own feelings, but thinking it necessary to explain herself, said to him: ‘My liege, your assurances are no longer admissible. My destiny and yours are henceforward as far asunder as the poles.’

“ ‘Ah! Blanche,’ interrupted Enriquez with impatience, what cutting words are these, too painful for my sense of hearing? Who dares step in between our loves? Who would venture to stand forward against the headlong rage of a king who would kindle all Sicily into a conflagration, rather than suffer you to be ravished from his long-cherished hopes?’

“ ‘All your power, my liege, great as it is,’ replied the daughter of Siffredi in a tone of melancholy, ‘becomes inefficient against the obstacles in the way of our union. I know not how to tell it you, but⁠ ⁠… I am married to the constable.’

“ ‘Married to the constable!’ exclaimed the prince, starting back to some distance from her. He could proceed no further in his discourse, so completely was he thunderstruck at the intelligence. Overwhelmed by this unexpected blow, he felt his strength forsake him. His unconscious limbs laid themselves without his guidance against the trunk of a tree just behind him. His countenance was pallid, his whole frame in a tremor, his mind bewildered, and his spirits depressed. With no sense or faculty at liberty but that of gazing, and there every power of his soul was suspended on Blanche, he made her feel most poignantly how he himself was agonized by the fatal event she had announced. The expression of countenance on her part was such as to show him that her emotions were not uncongenial with his own. Thus did these two distressed lovers for a time preserve a silence towards each other, which portended something of terror in its calmness. At length the prince, recovering a little from his disorder by an effort of courage, resumed the discourse, and said to Blanche with a sigh, ‘Madam, what have you done? You have destroyed me, and involved yourself in the same ruin by your credulity.’

“Blanche was offended at the seeming reproaches of the king, when the strongest grounds of complaint were apparently on her side. ‘What! my lord,’ answered she, ‘do you add dissimulation to infidelity? Would you have me reject the evidence of my own eyes and ears, so as to believe you innocent in spite of their report? No, my lord, I will own to you such an effort of abstraction is not in my power.’

“ ‘And yet, madam,’ replied the king, ‘these witnesses by whose testimony you have been so fully convinced, are but impostors. They have been in a conspiracy to betray you. It is no less the fact that I am innocent and faithful, than it is true that you are married to the constable.’

“ ‘What is it you say, my lord?’ replied she. ‘Did I not overhear you confirming the pledge of your hand and heart to Constance? Have you not bound yourself to the nobility of the realm, and undertaken to comply with the will of the late king? Has not the princess received the homage of your new subjects as their queen, and in quality of bride to Prince Enriquez? Were my eyes then fascinated? Tell me, tell me rather, traitor, that Blanche was weighed as dust in the balance of your heart, when compared with the attractions of a throne. Without lowering yourself so far as to assume what you no longer feel, and what perhaps you never felt, own at once that the crown of Sicily appeared a more tenable possession with Constance than with the daughter of Leontio. You are in the right, my lord. My title to an illustrious throne, and to the heart of a prince like you, stands on an equally precarious footing. It was vanity in the extreme to prefer a claim to either; but you ought not to have drawn me on into error. You will recollect what alarms were my portion at the very thought of losing you, of which I had almost a supernatural foreboding. Why did you lull my apprehensions to sleep! To what purpose was that delusive mockery? I might else have accused Fate rather than yourself, and you would at least have retained an interest in my heart, though unaccompanied by a hand which no other suitor could ever have obtained. As we are now circumstanced, your justification is out of season. I am married to the constable. To relieve me from the continuance of an interview which casts a shade over my purity hitherto unsullied, permit me, my lord, without failing in due respect, to withdraw from the presence of a prince to whose addresses I am even no longer at liberty to listen.’

“With these words, she darted away from Enriquez in as hurried a step as the agitation of her spirits would allow. ‘Stop, madam,’ exclaimed he; ‘drive not to despair a prince inclined to overturn a throne which you reproach him for having preferred to yourself, rather than yield to the importunities of his new subjects.’

“ ‘That sacrifice is under present circumstances superfluous,’ rejoined Blanche. ‘The bond must be broken between the constable and me, before any effect can be produced by these generous transports. Since I am not my own mistress, little would it avail that Sicily should be embroiled, nor does it concern me to whom you give your hand. If I had betrayed my own weakness, and suffered my heart to be surprised, at least shall I muster fortitude enough to suppress every soft emotion, and prove to the new king of Sicily, that the wife of the constable is no longer the mistress of Prince Enriquez.’

“While this conversation was passing, they reached the park gate. With a sudden spring she and Nisa got within the walls. As they took care to fasten the wicket after them,