Her bit of liberty increased her chafing at the deadly monotony of this existence, and envenomed the accusation by seeming to push her forth quite half way to meet him, if he would but come or show sign!  She impetuously vindicated him from the charge of crediting the sincerity of any words she might have committed to paper at the despotic dictation of her father.  Oh, no; Alvan could not be guilty of such folly as that; he could not; it would be to suppose him unacquainted with her, ignorant of the nature of women.  He would know that she wrote the words—­why?  She could not perfectly recollect how she had come to write them, and found it easier to extinguish the act of having written them at all, which was done by the angry recurrence to his failure to intervene now when the drama cried for his godlike appearance.  Perhaps he was really unacquainted with her thought her stronger than she was!  The idea reflected a shadow on his intelligence.  She was not in a situation that could bear of her blaming herself.

While she was thus devoured by the legions of her enfeebled wits, Clotilde was assiduously courted by her family, and her father from time to time brought pen and paper for her to write anew from his dictation.  He was pleased to hail her as his fair secretary, and when the letters were unimportant she wrote flowingly, happy to be praised.  They were occasionally addressed to friends; she discovered herself writing one to the professor, in which he was about to be informed that she had resolved to banish Alvan from her mind for ever.  She stopped; her heart stopped; the pen fell from her hand, in loathing.  Her father warily bade her proceed.  She could not; she signified it choking.  Only a few days before she had written to the professor exultingly of her engagement.  She refused to belie herself in such a manner; retrospectively her rapid contradictions appeared impossible; the picture of her was not human, and she gave out a negative of her whole frame convulsed, whereat the General was not slow to remind her of the scourgings she had undergone by a sudden burst of his wrath.  He knew the proper physic.  ’You girls want the lesson we read to skittish recruits; you shall have it.  Write:  “He is now as nothing to me.”  You shall write that you hate him, if you hesitate!  Why, you unreasonable slut, you have given him up; you have told him you have given him up, and what objection can you have to telling others now you have done it?’

‘I was forced to it, body and soul!’ cried Clotilde, sobbing and bursting into desperation out of a weak show of petulance that she had put on to propitiate him.  ’If I have to tell, I will tell how it was.  For that my heart is unchanged, and Alvan is, and will be, my lord, all the world may see.  I would rather write that I hate him.’

‘You write, the man is now as nothing to me!’ said her father, dashing his finger in a fiery zig-zag along the line for her pen to follow.  ’Or else, my girl, you’ve been playing us a pretty farce!’ He strung himself for a mad gallop of wrath, gave her a shudder, and relapsed.  ’No, no, you’re wiser, you’re a better girl than that.  Write it.  I must have it written-here, come!  The worst is over; the rest is child’s play.  Come, take the pen, I’ll guide your hand.’