These tender souls sounded the same
note: held apart by grief, as formerly by the timidities of youth and
by respect for the sufferings of the mother, they clung to the
magnificent language of the eyes, the mute eloquence of devoted
actions, the constant unison of thoughts,--divine harmonies of youth,
the first steps of a love still in its infancy. Emmanuel came every
morning to inquire for Claes and Marguerite, but he never entered the
dining-room, where the family now sat, unless to bring a letter from
Gabriel or when Balthazar invited him to come in. His first glance at
the young girl contained a thousand sympathetic thoughts; it told her
that he suffered under these conventional restraints, that he never
left her, he was always with her, he shared her grief. He shed the
tears of his own pain into the soul of his dear one by a look that was
marred by no selfish reservation. His good heart lived so completely
in the present, he clung so firmly to a happiness which he believed to
be fugitive, that Marguerite sometimes reproached herself for not
generously holding out her hand and saying, "Let us at least be
friends."
Pierquin continued his suit with an obstinacy which is the
unreflecting patience of fools. He judged Marguerite by the ordinary
rules of the multitude when judging of women. He believed that the
words marriage, freedom, fortune, which he had put into her mind,
would geminate and flower into wishes by which he could profit; he
imagined that her coldness was mere dissimulation.
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