I have told you, Joyzelle, his life is in my hands and cannot escape without my consent. I warned you of it. The poison is doing its work and I can see it. I alone can cure him, snatch him from death, call back his vigour, his beauty, which are fading away, and restore him to you as he was before....
Ah, I entreat you, do not dally thus!... What is his beauty to me, if his life escapes us?... Give him back to me as he is, whatever he may be, what care I, if only I have him back, if only he breathes!...
Yes, I will give him back to you. I have already twice done--and each time repented--what I will do again for the last time, since you ask it: but it is a sacrifice which none but you could have obtained. By restoring his life, I risk my own. To rouse his strength, to recall his soul, I must give him a part of my strength, a part of my soul. It may be that he will take from me more than I have left and that I shall fall dead beside the rival whom I shall have restored to life.... Time was when I would thus risk my existence to save a stranger by the wayside, almost without hesitating and without asking anything in exchange.... But to-day I am more prudent and more wise. As I am offering my life, it is but fair that I should be paid for it and paid in advance; and I will give it to him only if you promise me the dearest moment of your own....
(_Aside._) O poor and all too innocent child!... And you, my chaste thoughts, oh, take no part in the odious words which my voice must now spread around their love!... I blush at the proof and am ashamed of what I am now compelled to say.... You will forgive me when you know all.... It is not I that speak: it is the future, which man ought not to know, the shameless, pitiless future, which reveals a day and throws light upon a destiny only to conceal the rest and which wishes that I should know whether you are she whom it marks out....
What are you saying?... Why do you hesitate?... There is nothing in the world; examine myself as I may, I see nothing in the world, in our world or in the other, that I could be asked and not be ready to....
See, I will cease talking in riddles.... That man whom you see and whom you hold pressed in your arms lies stretched as near death as though he were laid on the slab of his tomb.... A movement can bring him back to life; a movement can make him fall on the other side.... Well, at the very moment when you say yes and before the echo which slumbers yonder under those marble vaults has time to repeat that you have consented, I will make the certain movement which will snatch him from the darkness, provided that you promise to come to-night, here, in this room in which I shall restore him to you and on this same bed over which you are leaning, to give yourself to me, without shame, without reserve....