Besides, why should I care now for liberty?
What should I do with it? Have I not lost all that made it worth
possessing--the Hero I worshipped, the Cause I honoured, the home I loved,
the woman I adored? What better place for me than a prison ... unless the
grave?"
He roused himself. He had been thinking aloud, unconscious of my presence;
but seeing my startled eyes fixed full upon his face, he smiled, and said
with a sudden change of voice and manner:--
"Go pluck me that namesake of yours over yonder--the big white Marguerite
on the edge of the grass plat. Thanks, petite. Now I'll be sworn you guess
what I am going to do with it! No? Well, I am going to question these
little sibylline leaves, and make the Marguerite tell me whether I am
destined to a prison all the days of my life. What! you never heard of the
old flower sortilege? Why, Gretchen, I thought every little German maiden
learned it in the cradle with her mother tongue!"
"But how can the Marguerite answer you, Monsieur Maurice?" I exclaimed.
"You shall see--but I must tell you first that the flower is not used to
pronounce upon such serious matters. She is the oracle of village lads and
lasses--not of grave prisoners like myself.
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