| "night, where are you going?" she cried; "What are you looking for? Have you lost your reason? What's become of your marriage, and think of my reputation?" "Don't worry about your reputation, Madame, he responded; no one can know; it's not a question of my marriage; it's no longer about my fortune, it's only about your heart, Madame, and to be loved by you; I renounce all the rest. You have let me see that you don't hate me, but you wanted me to hide that I am so happy my marriage pains you. I have come to tell you, Madame, that I renounce all of it, that this marriage would be to me a torture and that I don't want to live without you.
They are waiting for me now as I speak to you, all is ready, but I'll call off everything, if, in doing so, I please you and prove my passion.
The Countess fell back on her couch from which she had half risen and, looking at the Knight with eyes full of love and tears she said: "You want me to die? Do you believe that a heart can contain all you have made me feel? To leave because of me the fortune that awaits you! I can not even bear the thought. Go to Mademoiselle, the Princess of Neufchâtel, go to the grandeur you are destined for; you will have my heart at the same time. I will deal with my remorse, my uncertainties, my jealousy, since I must avow it to you, all of my feeble reasoning will council me; but I will never see you again if you don't go immediately to carry out your marriage. Go, don't stay a moment longer, but for the love of me and for the love of yourself, renounce a passion as unreasoned as the one you show to me and that will lead us perhaps to some horrible misfortune."
The Knight was at first transported by the joy of seeing himself so truly loved by the Countess of Tende; but the horror of giving himself to another reappeared before his eyes. He cried, he felt distressed, he promised her all that she wanted on the condition that he would see her again in the same place. She wanted to know before he left, how he had entered there. He told her that he trusted an equerry who had been in her service, and now was in his to let him slip through by the stable courtyard where the little step outside the equerry's room also led to hers.
Meanwhile, the hour of the marriage approached and the Knight, pressed by the Countess of Tende, was at last forced to leave. But he went, as if it were a torture, to the grandest and most agreeable fortune to which a young son without property could ever be elevated.
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