“Boy, boy!” exclaimed the cardinal impatiently, “you will make me believe your brain is turned.  What! will you venture to compare my residence to a cloister? my hundred attendants, my outriders, the gentlemen of my suite, and my guards, to a cell and a broom, which are the only arms and the sole wealth of a cloister?  Are you mad?  Did you not just now say that you repudiate these superfluities—­these pictures, precious vases, pomp and distinction, which I cannot do without?  Have you, as I have, the desire and hope of placing on your brow the tiara of St. Peter?  That, indeed, is a career, Henri; one presses onward toward it, struggles for it, lives in it.  But as for you! it is the miner’s pick, the trappist’s spade, the gravedigger’s tomb, that you desire; utter abandonment of life, of pleasure, of hope; and all that—­I blush with shame for you, a man—­all that, I say, because you love a woman who loves you not.  You do foul injustice to your race, Henri, most truly.”

“Brother!” exclaimed the young man, pale as death, while his eyes blazed with kindling fire, “would you sooner have me blow out my brains, or plunge in my heart the sword I have the honor to wear by my side?  Pardieu, monseigneur, if you, who are cardinal and prince besides, will give me absolution for so mortal a sin, the affair will be so quickly done that you shall have no time to complete your odious and unworthy thought that I am capable of dishonoring my race, which, Heaven be praised, a Joyeuse will never do.”

“Come, come, Henri,” said the cardinal, drawing his brother toward him, and pressing him in his arms; “come, forget what has passed, and think of those who love you.  I have personal motives for entreating you.  Listen to me; a rare occurrence in this world of ours, we are all happy, some from feelings of gratified ambition, the others from blessings of every kind with which Heaven has bedecked our existence.  Do not, I implore you, Henri, cast the mortal poison of the retreat you speak of upon our family happiness; think how our father would be grieved at it; think, too, how all of us would bear on our countenances the dark reflection of the bitter mortification you are about to inflict upon us.  I beseech yon, Henri, to allow yourself to be persuaded; the cloister will not benefit you.

“I do not say that you will die there, for, misguided man, your answer will be a smile, which alas, would be only too intelligible for me.  No, believe me that the cloister is more fatal to you than the tomb.  The tomb annihilates but life itself, the cloister annihilates intelligence; the cloister bows the head, instead of raising it to heaven; the cold, humid atmosphere of the vaults passes by degrees into the blood, and penetrates the very marrow of the bones, changing the cloistered recluse into another granite statue in the convent.  My brother, my dear brother, take heed; our time here below is but brief; youth visits us but once in our lives.