A month had passed away since the events we have described. One Sunday
evening, after vespers, the Abbess of Sainte-Radegonde de Peyssac came
forth last from the church at the end of the convent garden, now and
then turning her tear-reddened eyes toward a dark thicket of yews and
fir-trees, with such an expression of longing and regret that one would
have said that her heart was in that spot and seeking to detain her
there.
Before her, the nuns, veiled and silent, walking in single file along
the path to the convent, seemed like a long procession of phantoms
returning to the tomb, followed by another phantom who left the earth
behind regretfully.
One by one the nuns disappeared beneath the sombre arches of the
cloister; the superior followed them with her eyes until the last one
had entered, then let them fall upon the capital of a Gothic column
half buried in the grass, with an indescribable expression of hopeless
despair.
"Oh, my God! my God!" said she, placing her hand on her heart, "thou
art my witness that I cannot endure this life, of which I did not
realize the true nature. I sought solitude and obscurity in the
cloister, and not the constant scrutiny of all these curious eyes."
With that she raised her head, and took a step toward the little clump
of firs.
"After all," said she, "what matters the world to me, since I have
denied it? The world has done me naught but injury; society has been
pitiless to me, and why should I concern myself with its opinions,--I,
who have sought shelter with God, and depend upon him alone? But
perhaps God frowns upon this love which lives on in my heart and
consumes it. In that case, may he either tear it from my heart, or tear
my heart from my body!"
But no sooner had the poor desperate creature pronounced these words
than, casting her eyes upon the gown she wore, she was horrified at
the thought of the blasphemy of which she had been guilty, so out of
harmony was it with her saintly costume. With her thin white hand she
wiped away the tears that glistened on her eyelids, and, raising her
eyes to heaven, consecrated her life to everlasting suffering in a
single look.
At that moment she heard a voice at her ear; it was the voice of the
sister who kept the door of the convent.
"Madame," said she, "there is a woman in the parlor who wishes to be
allowed to speak to you."
"Her name?"
"She refuses to tell it except to you."
"To what class in life does she seem to belong?99
"She seems a person of distinction."
"Still society, society!" murmured the abbess.
"What answer shall I give her?"
"That I await her coming."
"Where, madame?"
"Bring her hither; I will listen to her here in the garden, sitting
upon this bench. I need the air; I stifle when I am indoors."
The portress withdrew, to reappear a moment later, followed by a
woman whom it was easy to recognize as a woman of distinction by her
garments, which were handsome, although of sombre hue.
She was rather below the average height; her rapid gait lacked
something of nobility perhaps, but her presence exhaled an
indescribable charm. She carried under her arm a little ivory casket,
whose polished whiteness contrasted sharply with the black satin of her
jet-trimmed dress.
"Madame," said the portress, "this is Madame la Supérieure."
The abbess lowered her veil, and turned toward the stranger, and as she
saw that she kept her eyes turned upon the ground, and that she was
deadly pale and trembling with emotion, she bestowed a kindly glance
upon her, and said:--
"You expressed a wish to speak with me, and I am ready to listen to
you, my sister."
"Madame," replied the stranger, "I have been so happy that in my pride
I have thought that not even God himself could destroy my happiness.
To-day God has breathed upon it, and I feel that I must weep and repent
I have come to seek shelter here, so that my sobs may be stifled by the
thick walls of your convent, and that my tears, which trace a furrow
upon my cheeks, may not make me a laughing-stock to the world; so that
God, who might seek me amid scenes of merry-making, would find me
weeping in the sanctuary, and praying contritely at its altar."
"Your heart is deeply wounded, I can see, for I too know what it is
to suffer," replied the young superior; "and in its agony the heart
cannot clearly distinguish between what really is, and what it desires.
If solitude, mortification of the flesh, and to do penance are what
you need, my sister, come to us, and suffer with us; but if you seek
a place where you can give vent freely to your grief and your despair,
where no curious gaze will be fastened upon you, oh, madame! madame!
fly from this place, and take refuge in your own room, where the world
will see you much less than you will be seen here, and the hangings of
your oratory will absorb the sound of your sobs much more effectively
than the planks of our cells. And God, unless the enormity of your
crimes has compelled him to turn his eyes away from you, will see you
wherever you are."
The stranger raised her head, and gazed in profound amazement at the
young abbess who talked in such an extraordinary strain.
"Why, madame," said she, "should not all who suffer seek the Lord's
help; and is not your establishment a consecrated station upon the way
to heaven?"
"There is but one path that leads to God, my sister," replied the nun,
carried away by her despair. "What do you regret? For what do you weep?
What do you desire? Society has turned a cold shoulder upon you, your
friends are false to you, you lack money, or some transitory sorrow
has made you a believer in everlasting misery; am I not right? You are
suffering at this moment, and you fancy that you will suffer always
thus, even as, when one sees an open wound, one fancies that it will
never close. But you are mistaken; every wound that is not mortal will
heal; so suffer on, and let your sorrow take its course; you will be
cured, and then, if you are bound to us, suffering of another sort will
begin; and that suffering will be in very truth unending, implacable,
and past endurance. You will look out, through a barrier of brass, upon
the world, to which you cannot return; then you will curse the day
when the door of this holy hostelry, which you take for a station on
the road to heaven, closed upon you. This that I say to you is not in
strict accordance with our rules perhaps,--I have not been abbess long
enough to know them thoroughly,--but 't is in strict accord with the
feelings of my heart, and it is what I see every hour, not, in my own
case, thank God! but all about me."
"Oh! no, no!" cried the stranger, "the world is at an end for me; I
have lost everything that made the world attractive to me. No, madame,
have no fear; I shall never regret it, never,--I am sure I shall never
regret it!"
"Then the sorrow that afflicts you has a deeper source? Instead of
an illusion have you lost a reality? Have you been separated forever
from a husband, or child--or from a friend? Ah! then I pity you with
all my heart, madame, for your heart is pierced from side to side and
your wound is incurable. In that case, come to us, madame; the Lord
will comfort you; he will replace the friends or kindred you may have
lost with us, who form one large family, a flock of which he is the
shepherd; and," added the abbess in a lower tone, "if he does not
comfort you, which is quite possible, there will remain to you the last
poor consolation of weeping with me, who came hither like yourself, in
quest of comfort, but have not yet found it here."
"Alas!" cried the stranger, "was it such words as these that I hoped to
hear? Is it thus that the unhappy are consoled?"
"Madame," said the superior, putting out her hand as if to ward off
the rebuke, "do not speak of unhappiness before me; I know not who you
may be, I know not what has happened to you, but you know nothing of
unhappiness."
"Oh!" cried the stranger, in an agonized tone which made the superior
shudder, "you do not know me, madame, for if you did know me, you would
not speak so to me; besides, you cannot fairly judge my suffering, for
to do that you must have suffered what I suffer; meanwhile, receive me,
make me welcome, open the gates of God's house to me; and by my tears
and cries and agony you will know if I am truly unhappy."
"Yes," said the superior, "I realize from your accent and from your
words that you have lost the man you love, have you not?"
The stranger sobbed, and wrung her hands.
"Oh! yes, yes!" said she.
"Very well; since it is your desire, be one of our community; but first
let me tell you what awaits you here, if your sufferings are equal to
mine: two everlasting, pitiless walls, which, instead of turning our
thoughts toward heaven, whither they should rise, constantly confine
them to the earth, from which you will be separated; for while the
blood flows, and the pulses beat, and the heart loves, none of the
faculties are extinct; isolated as we are, and hidden from sight as we
believe ourselves to be, the dead call to us from the depths of the
tomb: 'Why do you leave the place where your dead are buried?'"
"Because all that I have loved in the world is here," replied the
stranger, in a choking voice, throwing herself at the feet of the
superior, who gazed at her in profound astonishment. "Now you have
my secret, my sister; now you can understand my grief, my mother. I
implore you on my knees--you see my tears--to accept the sacrifice I
make to God, or rather to grant the favor I ask at your hands. He is
buried in the church of Peyssac; let me weep upon his tomb, which is
here."
"What tomb? Of whom are you speaking? What do you mean?" cried the
superior, drawing back from the kneeling woman, at whom she gazed with
something very like terror.
"When I was happy," continued the penitent, in a voice so low that it
was drowned by the sighing of the wind among the branches, "when I was
happy--and I have been very happy--I was called Nanon de Lartigues. Do
you recognize me now, and do you know what it is that I implore?"
The superior sprang to her feet as if released by a spring, and stood
for a moment, motionless and pale, with uplifted eyes and clasped hands.
"Oh, madame!" she said at last in a voice which she struggled to
render calm, but which trembled with emotion, "oh, madame, is it true
that you, who come here to weep beside a tomb, have no knowledge who
I am? You do not know that I have purchased with my freedom, with
my happiness in this world, and with all the tears of my heart the
melancholy pleasure of which you now claim an equal portion. You are
Nanon de Lartigues; I, when I had a name, was the Vicomtesse de Cambes."
Nanon, with a sharp cry, walked up to the superior, and, raising the
hood which shaded the nun's dull eyes, recognized her rival.
"'T is she!" murmured Nanon. "And she was so lovely when she came to
Saint-Georges! Poor woman!"
She stepped back, with her eyes still fixed on the viscountess, and
shaking her head.
"Oh!" cried the viscountess with a touch of the pride that all men
feel to know that their capacity for suffering is greater than their
fellows'; "it is kind of you to say that, and it has done me good. I
must have suffered cruelly to have undergone so cruel a change; I must
have wept bitterly; I am more unhappy than you, therefore, for you are
lovely still."
And the viscountess raised her eyes, beaming with the first ray of joy
that had shone in them for a month past, as if seeking Canolles in the
sky above her head.
Nanon, still on her knees, hid her face in her hands and burst into
tears.
"Alas! madame," said she, "I did not know to whom my petition was
addressed; for the last month I have known nothing of what was taking
place, and that ignorance has preserved my beauty; beyond all question
I have been mad. Now I am at your command. I have no desire to make
you jealous of the dead. I ask to be admitted here as the humblest of
your nuns; you can do with me as you please, and if I disobey you can
subject me to the severest discipline,--you have the dungeon and the
_impace._ But," she added in a trembling voice, "you will at least
let me from time to time see the place where the man we both loved so
dearly is buried?"
She fell, sobbing and almost unconscious, upon the turf.
The viscountess made no reply; leaning against the trunk of a sycamore,
she seemed ready to expire at her side.
"Oh! madame," cried Nanon, "you do not answer; you refuse! Be it so; I
have a single treasure in my possession, and you perhaps have nothing
that was his; grant my request and that treasure is yours."
As she spoke she took from her breast a large locket which was attached
to a gold chain about her neck, and, offered it to Madame de Cambes,
holding it open in her hand.
Claire pounced upon the relic, and kissed the cold, life-less hair with
such vehemence that it seemed as if her heart came to her lips to share
the kiss.
"Do you think," said Nanon, still kneeling at her feet, "that you have
ever suffered more than I suffer at this moment?"
"Ah! you carry the day, madame," said Claire, lifting her up and taking
her to her arms; "come, come, my sister, for I love you better than all
the world for having shared this treasure with me."
She leaned over Nanon, as she gently raised her, and lightly kissed her
cheek who had been her rival.
"Yes, you shall be my sister and my dearest friend," said she; "yes,
we will live and die together, talking of him and praying for him. He
sleeps near by in our church; it was the only favor I could obtain from
her to whom I devoted my life. May God forgive her!"
With that, Claire took Nanon's hand, and side by side, stepping so
lightly that they scarcely bent the blades of grass beneath their feet,
they walked to the clump of yew-trees behind which the church was
hidden.
The viscountess led Nanon to a chapel, in the centre of which a simple
stone stood up some four inches above the ground; a cross was carved
upon the stone.
The viscountess pointed to it without speaking.
Nanon knelt and kissed the cold marble. Claire leaned against the
altar, kissing the lock of hair. The one was trying to accustom herself
to the thought of death, the other to dream for the last time of life.
A quarter of an hour after, the two women returned together to the
house. Except to pray, they had not for an instant broken their
woebegone silence.
"Madame," said the viscountess, "from this hour you have your cell
in this convent; would you like the one adjoining mine?--we shall be
separated less."
"I thank you very humbly, madame," said Nanon, "for the offer, and I
gratefully accept it. But before I leave the world forever let me say
farewell for the last time to my brother, who is waiting at the gate;
he also is overcome with sorrow."
"Alas!" said Claire, to whose mind the thought came instinctively that
Cauvignac's safety caused the death of his companion in captivity; "go,
my sister."
Nanon left the room.