In a very short time, the expense I was obliged to incur but which I
concealed from Julie, in order to accompany her on our daily country
excursions, had so far exhausted the proceeds of the sale of my
mother's last diamond that I had only ten louis left. When each night I
reckoned over the limited number of happy days represented by that
small sum, I was seized with fits of despondency, but I should have
blushed to confess my excessive poverty to her I loved. Though far from
wealthy she would have wished to share with me all she possessed, and
that would have degraded our intercourse in my eyes. I valued my love
more than life, but I would rather have died than have debased my love.
The sedentary life I had led all the winter in my dismal room, my
intense application to study all day, the tension of my thoughts
towards one object, the want of sleep at night, but, above all, the
moral exhaustion of a heart too weak to bear a continuous ecstasy of
ten months, had undermined my constitution. A consuming flame, which
burned unfed, shone through my wan and pale face. Julie implored me to
leave Paris, to try the effect of my native air, and to preserve my
life, even at the expense of her happiness. She sent me her doctor, to
add the authority of science to the entreaties of her love. Her doctor,
or rather her friend, Dr. Alain, was one of those men who carry a
blessing with them, and whose countenance seems to reflect Heaven by
the bedside of the sick poor they visit. He was himself suffering from
a complaint of the heart brought on by a pure and mysterious passion
for one of the loveliest women in Paris.
He was active, humane, pious, and tolerant, and possessing a small
fortune sufficient for his simple wants and charities, practiced only
for a few friends or for the poor. His physic was friendship or charity
in action. The medical career is so admirable when divested of all
cupidity, it brings so much into play the better feelings of our
nature, that it often ends by being a virtue after commencing as a
profession, With Dr. Alain it was more than a virtue; it had become a
passion for relieving the woes of the body and of the soul, which are
often so closely linked! Where Alain brought life, he also took God
with him, and made even Death resplendent with serenity and
immortality.
I saw him, too, die, some years later, the death of the righteous and
the just. He had learned how to die at many deathbeds; and when
stretched motionless on his, during six months of agony, his eye
counted on a little clock, which stood at the foot of his bed, the
hours that divided him from eternity. He pressed upon his bosom, with
his crossed hands, a crucifix, emblem of patience, and his look never
quitted that celestial friend, as though he had conversed at the foot
of the cross. When he suffered beyond his powers of endurance he
requested that the crucifix might be approached to his lips, and his
prayers were then mingled with thanksgiving. At last he slept,
supported to the end by his hopes and the memory of the good he had
done. He had given the poor and the sick an accumulated treasure of
good works to carry before him into the presence of the God of the
merciful. He died on a wretched bed in a garret, leaving no
inheritance. The poor bore his body to the grave, and, in their turn,
gave him the burial of charity in the common earth. O blessed soul,
that in memory, I still see smiling on that kind countenance, lighted
with inward joy, can so much virtue have been to thee but a deception?
Hast thou vanished like the reflection of my lamp upon thy portrait,
when my hand withdraws the light that allowed me to contemplate it? No,
no; God is faithful, and cannot have deceived thee, who wouldst not
have deceived a child!