What should he decide? that was his second.  Should he go away?  That meant fortune, reconciliation with the Bishop, putting his foot in the stirrup of honours.  Young, intelligent, learned, what was there to stop him?

But that meant separation from Suzanne:  saying farewell to all those divine delights which he had just tasted.  He had hardly time to moisten his parched lips in the cup, before the cup was shattered.  He was truly in love, for he should have said to himself:  “There are other cups.”  But for him there was but one.  Uncle Ridoux, the Bishop and greatness might go to the devil.  The promised cure and the episcopal mitre might go to the devil too.  Did he not possess the most precious of treasures, the most enviable blessing, the supplement and complement of everything, the ambition of every young man, the desire of every old man, of every man who has a heart:  a young, lovely, modest, loving, intelligent and adored mistress.  But what might not be the result of that love?  What drama, what tragedy, and perhaps what ludicrous comedy, in which he, the priest, would play the odious and ridiculous character?

This love, which plunged him into an ocean of delights, would it not plunge him also into an abyss of misfortunes?

Could it proceed for long without being known and remarked?

Scandal, shame, and death perhaps, a terrible trinity, were they waiting not at his door?

For the viper which harboured at his hearth, had its piercing glassy eye fixed unweariedly on him; and how could he crush the viper?

What could he do?  What could he venture?  He remembered hearing of priests who had fled away with young girls whom they had seduced, and he thought for an instant that he would carry off Suzanne and fly.

Willingly would he have left behind him his honour and his reputation, willingly would he have torn his priestly robe on the sharp points of infamy and scandal, willingly would he have quitted for ever that cursed parsonage where shame and humiliation, vice and remorse were henceforth installed; but Suzanne, would she follow him?

Then, had he well weighed the mortifications which await the apostate priest!

To be nameless in society, with no future, repulsed, despised, scoffed at by all!

Should he, like the Pere Hyacinth, go and found a free church in some corner of the republic, and rove through Europe, like him, to confer about morality, the rights of women and virtue?

Would not poverty come and knock at his door?  Poverty with a beloved wife!  It would appear a hideous and terrifying spectre, chilling in its livid approach and in its kisses of love.

To struggle against these obstacles he would need high energy and high courage, and he felt that courage and energy were lacking in him, the miserable coward, who had shamefully succumbed to the clumsy artifices of a lascivious woman, who had allowed the first fruits of his virginity and his youth to be lost in shameful debauch; while close by there was an adorable maiden whose heart was beating in unison with his own.