“Come tell me what you will do, since that will not cause it to happen, and I will tell you what I would do if you should prove false.”
“Why do you say such things? Why do you invoke death?” And Alberto, with solemn face had replied, what she had never since forgotten. “Because disillusionment and death are the two irreconcilable enemies of life and one ought ever to reckon with them.”
As Clothilde remained silent, Alberto, after drying her eyes, which were immediately again filled with tears, demanded a solemn oath from her, not of the many with which sweethearts constantly regale each other, but of those which fix themselves forever, which impress us by their very solemnity; would she swear it by her mother? Would she fulfil it whatever happens? Truly—? If—?
“Then swear to me, that only in honest wedlock will you ever belong to another man!”
And Clothilde swore; and now, before that portrait and that scene as it rose in her memory, she felt herself criminal, very criminal, lost, and unhappy. She did not leave the bureau; she could see the road, obscure in the night; she could see the little inn; some muleteers, the tavernkeeper, who spoke of robbers, ghosts, crops, and horses; she could see Alberto and now she dared not raise her eyes to look at his face in the plain frame. Turning her back to it, she lay down in the bed, buried her head among the pillows, and closed her eyes; but instead of conciliating sleep, there presented themselves before her, pictures of her brief domestic life with Alberto; and, worst of all, amid these pictures, the figure of Julio, of Julio supplicating and ill, of Julio wearied and weighed down with cares, was not hateful to her.
“Here is the fortnight’s pay, do me the favor of handling it.”