“My child, I have a hundred and forty _louis_ laid by. When you know
where Madame de Rochefide is, come and get them and follow her.”
Calyste thanked the old man, whose existence he envied. But now, from
day to day, he grew morose; he seemed to love no one; all things hurt
him; he was gentle and kind to his mother only. The baroness watched
with ever increasing anxiety the progress of his madness; she alone was
able, by force of prayer and entreaty, to make him swallow food. Toward
the end of October the sick lad ceased to go even to the mall in search
of the chevalier, who now came vainly to the house to tempt him out with
the coaxing wisdom of an old man.
“We can talk of Madame de Rochefide,” he would say. “I’ll tell you my
first adventure.”
“Your son is ill,” he said privately to the baroness, on the day he
became convinced that all such efforts were useless.
Calyste replied to questions about his health that he was perfectly
well; but like all young victims of melancholy, he took pleasure in the
thought of death. He no longer left the house, but sat in the garden on
a bench, warming himself in the pale and tepid sunshine, alone with his
one thought, and avoiding all companionship.
Soon after the day when Calyste ceased to go even to Les Touches,
Felicite requested the rector of Guerande to come and see her. The
assiduity with which the Abbe Grimont called every morning at Les
Touches, and sometimes dined there, became the great topic of the
town; it was talked of all over the region, and even reached Nantes.
Nevertheless, the rector never missed a single evening at the hotel
du Guenic, where desolation reigned. Masters and servants were all
afflicted at Calyste’s increasing weakness, though none of them thought
him in danger; how could it ever enter the minds of these good people
that youth might die of love? Even the chevalier had no example of such
a death among his memories of life and travel. They attributed Calyste’s
thinness to want of food. His mother implored him to eat. Calyste
endeavored to conquer his repugnance in order to comfort her; but
nourishment taken against his will served only to increase the slow
fever which was now consuming the beautiful young life.
During the last days of October the cherished child of the house could
no longer mount the stairs to his chamber, and his bed was placed in
the lower hall, where he was surrounded at all hours by his family.
They sent at last for the Guerande physician, who broke the fever with
quinine and reduced it in a few days, ordering Calyste to take exercise,
and find something to amuse him. The baron, on this, came out of his
apathy and recovered a little of his old strength; he grew younger as
his son seemed to age. With Calyste, Gasselin, and his two fine dogs,
he started for the forest, and for some days all three hunted. Calyste
obeyed his father and went where he was told, from forest to forest,
visiting friends and acquaintances in the neighboring chateaus. But the
youth had no spirit or gaiety; nothing brought a smile to his face; his
livid and contracted features betrayed an utterly passive being. The
baron, worn out at last by fatigue consequent on this spasm of exertion,
was forced to return home, bringing Calyste in a state of exhaustion
almost equal to his own. For several days after their return both father
and son were so dangerously ill that the family were forced to send,
at the request of the Guerande physician himself, for two of the best
doctors in Nantes.
The baron had received a fatal shock on realizing the change now so
visible in Calyste. With that lucidity of mind which nature gives to the
dying, he trembled at the thought that his race was about to perish. He
said no word, but he clasped his hands and prayed to God as he sat in
his chair, from which his weakness now prevented him from rising. The
father’s face was turned toward the bed where the son lay, and he looked
at him almost incessantly. At the least motion Calyste made, a singular
commotion stirred within him, as if the flame of his own life were
flickering. The baroness no longer left the room where Zephirine sat
knitting in the chimney-corner in horrible uneasiness. Demands were
made upon the old woman for wood, father and son both suffering from the
cold, and for supplies and provisions, so that, finally, not being
agile enough to supply these wants, she had given her precious keys
to Mariotte. But she insisted on knowing everything; she questioned
Mariotte and her sister-in-law incessantly, asking in a low voice to
be told, over and over again, the state of her brother and nephew. One
night, when father and son were dozing, Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel told
her that she must resign herself to the death of her brother, whose
pallid face was now the color of wax. The old woman dropped her
knitting, fumbled in her pocket for a while, and at length drew out
an old chaplet of black wood, on which she began to pray with a fervor
which gave to her old and withered face a splendor so vigorous that the
other old woman imitated her friend, and then all present, on a sign
from the rector, joining in the spiritual uplifting of Mademoiselle de
Guenic.
“Alas! I prayed to God,” said the baroness, remembering her prayer after
reading the fatal letter written by Calyste, “and he did not hear me.”
“Perhaps it would be well,” said the rector, “if we begged Mademoiselle
des Touches to come and see Calyste.”
“She!” cried old Zephirine, “the author of all our misery! she who has
turned him from his family, who has taken him from us, led him to read
impious books, taught him an heretical language! Let her be accursed,
and may God never pardon her! She has destroyed the du Guenics!”
“She may perhaps restore them,” said the rector, in a gentle voice.
“Mademoiselle des Touches is a saintly woman; I am her surety for that.
She has none but good intentions to Calyste. May she only be enabled to
carry them out.”
“Let me know the day when she sets foot in this house, that I may get
out of it,” cried the old woman passionately. “She has killed both
father and son. Do you think I don’t hear death in Calyste’s voice? he
is so feeble now that he has barely strength to whisper.”
It was at this moment that the three doctors arrived. They plied Calyste
with questions; but as for his father, the examination was short; they
were surprised that he still lived on. The Guerande doctor calmly told
the baroness that as to Calyste, it would probably be best to take him
to Paris and consult the most experienced physicians, for it would cost
over a hundred _louis_ to bring one down.
“People die of something, but not of love,” said Mademoiselle de
Pen-Hoel.
“Alas! whatever be the cause, Calyste is dying,” said the baroness. “I
see all the symptoms of consumption, that most horrible disease of my
country, about him.”
“Calyste dying!” said the baron, opening his eyes, from which rolled two
large tears which slowly made their way, delayed by wrinkles, along his
cheeks,--the only tears he had probably ever shed in his life. Suddenly
he rose to his feet, walked the few steps to his son’s bedside, took his
hand, and looked earnestly at him.
“What is it you want, father?” said Calyste.
“That you should live!” cried the baron.
“I cannot live without Beatrix,” replied Calyste.
The old man dropped into a chair.
“Oh! where could we get a hundred _louis_ to bring doctors from Paris?
There is still time,” cried the baroness.
“A hundred _louis!_” cried Zephirine; “will that save him?”
Without waiting for her sister-in-law’s reply, the old maid ran her
hands through the placket-holes of her gown, unfastened the petticoat
beneath it, which gave forth a heavy sound as it dropped to the floor.
She knew so well the places where she had sewn in her _louis_ that she
now ripped them out with the rapidity of magic. The gold pieces rang
as they fell, one by one, into her lap. The old Pen-Hoel gazed at this
performance in stupefied amazement.
“But they’ll see you!” she whispered in her friend’s ear.
“Thirty-seven,” answered Zephirine, continuing to count.
“Every one will know how much you have.”
“Forty-two.”
“Double _louis!_ all new! How did you get them, you who can’t see
clearly?”
“I felt them. Here’s one hundred and four _louis_,” cried Zephirine. “Is
that enough?”
“What is all this?” asked the Chevalier du Halga, who now came in,
unable to understand the attitude of his old blind friend, holding out
her petticoat which was full of gold coins.
Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel explained.
“I knew it,” said the chevalier, “and I have come to bring a hundred and
forty _louis_ which I have been holding at Calyste’s disposition, as he
knows very well.”
The chevalier drew the _rouleaux_ from his pocket and showed them.
Mariotte, seeing such wealth, sent Gasselin to lock the doors.
“Gold will not give him health,” said the baroness, weeping.
“But it can take him to Paris, where he can find her. Come, Calyste.”
“Yes,” cried Calyste, springing up, “I will go.”
“He will live,” said the baron, in a shaking voice; “and I can die--send
for the rector!”
The words cast terror on all present. Calyste, seeing the mortal
paleness on his father’s face, for the old man was exhausted by the
cruel emotions of the scene, came to his father’s side. The rector,
after hearing the report of the doctors, had gone to Mademoiselle
des Touches, intending to bring her back with him to Calyste, for in
proportion as the worthy man had formerly detested her, he now admired
her, and protected her as a shepherd protects the most precious of his
flock.
When the news of the baron’s approaching end became known in Guerande,
a crowd gathered in the street and lane; the peasants, the _paludiers_,
and the servants knelt in the court-yard while the rector administered
the last sacraments to the old Breton warrior. The whole town was
agitated by the news that the father was dying beside his half-dying
son. The probable extinction of this old Breton race was felt to be a
public calamity.
The solemn ceremony affected Calyste deeply. His filial sorrow silenced
for a moment the anguish of his love. During the last hour of the
glorious old defender of the monarchy, he knelt beside him, watching
the coming on of death. The old man died in his chair in presence of the
assembled family.
“I die faithful to God and his religion,” he said. “My God! as the
reward of my efforts grant that Calyste may live!”
“I shall live, father; and I will obey you,” said the young man.
“If you wish to make my death as happy as Fanny has made my life, swear
to me to marry.”
“I promise it, father.”
It was a touching sight to see Calyste, or rather his shadow, leaning
on the arm of the old Chevalier du Halga--a spectre leading a shade--and
following the baron’s coffin as chief mourner. The church and the little
square were crowded with the country people coming in to the funeral
from a circuit of thirty miles.
But the baroness and Zephirine soon saw that, in spite of his intention
to obey his father’s wishes, Calyste was falling back into a condition
of fatal stupor. On the day when the family put on their mourning,
the baroness took her son to a bench in the garden and questioned him
closely. Calyste answered gently and submissively, but his answers only
proved to her the despair of his soul.
“Mother,” he said, “there is no life in me. What I eat does not feed me;
the air that enters my lungs does not refresh me; the sun feels cold;
it seems to you to light that front of the house, and show you the old
carvings bathed in its beams, but to me it is all a blur, a mist. If
Beatrix were here, it would be dazzling. There is but one only thing
left in this world that keeps its shape and color to my eyes,--this
flower, this foliage,” he added, drawing from his breast the withered
bunch the marquise had given him at Croisic.
The baroness dared not say more. Her son’s answer seemed to her more
indicative of madness than his silence of grief. She saw no hope, no
light in the darkness that surrounded them.
The baron’s last hours and death had prevented the rector from bringing
Mademoiselle des Touches to Calyste, as he seemed bent on doing, for
reasons which he did not reveal. But on this day, while mother and son
still sat on the garden bench, Calyste quivered all over on perceiving
Felicite through the opposite windows of the court-yard and garden.
She reminded him of Beatrix, and his life revived. It was therefore to
Camille that the poor stricken mother owed the first motion of joy that
lightened her mourning.
“Well, Calyste,” said Mademoiselle des Touches, when they met, “I want
you to go to Paris with me. We will find Beatrix,” she added in a low
voice.
The pale, thin face of the youth flushed red, and a smile brightened his
features.
“Let us go,” he said.
“We shall save him,” said Mademoiselle des Touches to the mother, who
pressed her hands and wept for joy.
A week after the baron’s funeral, Mademoiselle des Touches, the Baronne
du Guenic and Calyste started for Paris, leaving the household in charge
of old Zephirine.