“You cannot love me.  I should only dim your fame.  You can have nothing in common with a dishonored, ruined girl.  That is what I came here to explain to you.  Let us part, and let us for all time forget each other.”

But Gambetta took no heed of what she said.  Now that he had found her, he would not consent to lose her.  He seized her slender hands and covered them with kisses.  Again he urged that she should marry him.

Her answer was a curious one.  She was a devoted Catholic and would not regard any marriage as valid save a religious marriage.  On the other hand, Gambetta, though not absolutely irreligious, was leading the opposition to the Catholic party in France.  The Church to him was not so much a religious body as a political one, and to it he was unalterably opposed.  Personally, he would have no objections to being married by a priest; but as a leader of the anti-clerical party he felt that he must not recognize the Church’s claim in any way.  A religious marriage would destroy his influence with his followers and might even imperil the future of the republic.

They pleaded long and earnestly both then and afterward.  He urged a civil marriage, but she declared that only a marriage according to the rites of the Church could ever purify her past and give her back her self-respect.  In this she was absolutely stubborn, yet she did not urge upon Gambetta that he should destroy his influence by marrying her in church.

Through all this interplay of argument and pleading and emotion the two grew every moment more hopelessly in love.  Then the woman, with a woman’s curious subtlety and indirectness, reached a somewhat singular conclusion.  She would hear nothing of a civil marriage, because a civil marriage was no marriage in the eyes of Pope and prelate.  On the other hand, she did not wish Gambetta to mar his political career by going through a religious ceremony.  She had heard from a priest that the Church recognized two forms of betrothal.  The usual one looked to a marriage in the future and gave no marriage privileges until after the formal ceremony.  But there was another kind of betrothal known to the theologians as sponsalia de praesente.  According to this, if there were an actual betrothal, the pair might have the privileges and rights of marriage immediately, if only they sincerely meant to be married in the future.

The eager mind of Leonie Leon caught at this bit of ecclesiastical law and used it with great ingenuity.

“Let us,” she said, “be formally betrothed by the interchange of a ring, and let us promise each other to marry in the future.  After such a betrothal as this we shall be the same as married; for we shall be acting according to the laws of the Church.”

Gambetta gladly gave his promise.  A betrothal ring was purchased; and then, her conscience being appeased, she gave herself completely to her lover.  Gambetta was sincere.  He said to her: