If your
answer is decidedly unfavourable, the return of your friends to France
will be thenceforward impracticable, and their chateau, as well as their
house in Paris, will be declared national property, and sold without
delay to the highest bidder. To you, who have as much understanding as
beauty, it is unnecessary to say more. Consult your heart, charming
Victoire! be happy, and make others happy. This moment is decisive of
your fate and of theirs, for you have to answer a man of a most decided
character."
Victoire's answer was as follows:--
"My friends would not, I am sure, accept of their fortune, or consent to
return to their country, upon the conditions proposed; therefore I have
no merit in rejecting them."
Victoire had early acquired good principles, and that plain steady good
sense, which goes straight to its object, without being dazzled or
imposed upon by sophistry. She was unacquainted with the refinements of
sentiment, but she distinctly knew right from wrong, and had sufficient
resolution to abide by the right. Perhaps many romantic heroines might
have thought it a generous self-devotion to have become in similar
circumstances the mistress of Tracassier; and those who are skilled "to
make the worst appear the better cause" might have made such an act of
heroism the foundation of an interesting, or at least a fashionable
novel.
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