“But for heaven’s sake listen to me!”
“Marry me, and I will be your slave!”
“But that’s impossible.”
“You won’t deign to demean yourself by marrying me, you …” said Elèn, beginning to cry.
The prince tried to comfort her, but Elèn, as if quite distraught, said through her tears that there was nothing to prevent her marrying, that there were precedents (there were up to that time very few, but she mentioned Napoleon and some other exalted personages), that she had never been her husband’s wife, and that she had been sacrificed.
“But the law, religion …” said the prince, already yielding.
“The law, religion … What have they been invented for if they can’t arrange that?” said Elèn.
The prince was surprised that so simple an idea had not occurred to him, and he applied for advice to the holy brethren of the Society of Jesus, with whom he was on intimate terms.
A few days later at one of those enchanting fêtes which Elèn gave at her country house on the Stone Island, the charming Monsieur de Jobert, a man no longer young, with snow white hair and brilliant black eyes, a Jesuit à robe courte was presented to her, and in the garden by the light of the illuminations and to the sound of music talked to her for a long time of the love of God, of Christ, of the Sacred Heart, and of the consolations the one true Catholic religion affords in this world and the next. Elèn was touched, and more than once tears rose to her eyes and to those of Monsieur de Jobert and their voices trembled. A dance, for which her partner came to seek her, put an end to her discourse with her future directeur de conscience , but the next evening Monsieur de Jobert came to see Elèn when she was alone, and after that often came again.