THE LAST SLEEP.
Adèle had long since discovered that the events of greatest interest
in her life had transpired before she entered the walls of Rossillon,
or mingled in the festivities of the Court at Paris.
The scenes that occurred at Miramichi, during Mr. Lansdowne's
accidental residence there, were fraught with a power over her heart,
continually deepening with the flight of time. Those golden days, when
their lives flowed side by side, had been filled with the strange,
sweet agitations, the aerial dreams, the bewitching glamour, the
intoxicating happiness of a first and youthful love. Those days were
imprinted yet more deeply in her memory by a consciousness that there
was somewhat with which to reproach herself connected with them. Just
when she had reached the top of bliss, her pride had sprung up, and
like a dark stormcloud, had shadowed the scene. She could not forget
that cold, sad parting from her lover.
And now, though the ocean rolled between them, and the spheres in
which each moved were so widely separated and the years had come and
gone, she was yet calculating and balancing the probabilities, that
they might meet again and the wrong of the past be cancelled.
Mr. Lansdowne had been plodding among musty law books and threading
legal intricacies, with occasional interruptions, caused by fits of
impatience and disgust at the detail and tedium of study, until he had
at length fought his way through and placed himself in the front rank
of his profession. His brilliant achievement in the famous Jenkins
case, in the outset of his career, had at once won for him a position
at the bar which most young men have to toil years to obtain. His
family was wealthy and influential. It was not strange that with these
advantages, united to the possession of remarkable personal beauty, he
should be the centre of a numerous group of friends and admirers. He
was the object of pride among the older barristers and gentlemen of
the bench, the cynosure of the young men, and the one among a thousand
whom elegant mammas and smiling maidens wooed with their selectest
influences.
Yet one great element of earthly happiness was wanting to his life. He
could not forget the enchantment of those days spent in the far-off
wilds of Miramichi. He turned continually to those scenes, as the most
prominent of his existence. There he had stepped from boyhood into
manhood. There he had seen life in new and before untried forms. He
had there witnessed a wonderful display of God's power through the
terrible agency of the all-devouring flame, and there, for the first
time, he had confronted death and sorrow. There, he had loved once and
as he believed, forever. He recalled Adèle, as she first appeared
before him,--an unexpected vision of beauty, in all her careless grace
and sweet, confiding frankness; in her moments of stately pride, when
she chilled him from her side and kept him afar off; and in her
moments of affectionate kindness, and generous enthusiasm. In short,
in all her changeful moods she was daily flitting before him and he
confessed to himself, that he had never met a being so rich in nature
and varied in powers, so noble in impulse and purpose, so peerlessly
beautiful in person.
Thus he lived on from day to day, remembering and yearning and
dreaming,--the ocean yawning between him and his love. Concealed in
the depths of his soul, there was, however, a hope fondly cherished,
and a purpose half formed.
A few weeks after the reception of Mr. Norton's letter, the Count de
Rossillon died. Sitting, as usual, in his great purple-cushioned
arm-chair, taking his afternoon nap, he expired so gently that Mrs.
Dubois, who was reading by the window, did not know, or even suspect,
when the parting between spirit and body occurred. Kindly, genial, and
peaceful had been his last years, and his life went out calmly as the
light of day goes out amid the mellow tints of a pleasant autumn
sunset.
When Mrs. Dubois went to arouse him from what seemed an unusually long
slumber, she found a volume of Fénélon spread open upon his knee, and
turning it, her eye ran over passages full of lofty and devout
aspiration. These, probably expressed the latest thoughts and desires
of the good chevalier, for as she looked from the pages to his face,
turned upward toward the ceiling, a smile of assent and satisfaction
was still lingering there, although his breath had departed and his
pulse was still.
Mrs. Dubois stooped to kiss the forehead of her uncle, but started
back with a sudden thrill of fear. She gazed searchingly at him for a
moment, and then she knew that Death, the conqueror, stood there with
her, looking upon his completed work.
After the first shock of surprise was over, she remained gazing upon
the spectacle in perfect silence. A truly devout Catholic, in her
grief she leaned with all a woman's trust and confidingness upon the
love and power of Christ, and something of the divine calmness which
we associate with the character of the mother of our Lord, and which
has been so wonderfully depicted to the eye by some of the older
painters, pervaded her spirit.
As she thus stood, spellbound, entranced, her eyes fixed upon the
noble features irradiated with a smile of content and peace, the long
silvery locks parted away from the forehead and flowing around the
head, like a halo, she thought it the countenance of a saint, and her
poetic fancy created at once a vision of the Saviour, with an aspect
grand, glorious, yet gracious and benign, placing with His right hand
a golden jewelled crown upon her uncle's head. A cloud swept up over
the gorgeous earthliness of the great Rubens picture, and from out its
folds shone sweet and smiling angel faces, looking down upon the
scene.
Mrs. Dubois never knew how long she remained thus absorbed. She was
first aroused by hearing a voice saying, in tones of fervor, "How
blessed it is to die!" And Adèle, who had entered the room a little
time before, and had uttered these words, stepped forward and
imprinted a kiss upon the pale uplifted brow of the sleeper.