TO-MORROW
Every day at noon the prisoners walked for an hour in the garden and
courtyard of the Temple. They were quite cheerful, and sometimes even
gay. Madame Guillotine was grown familiar to their thoughts. They paid
each other compliments upon their courage, and made little jokes on
very grim subjects. The honeymoon of the Duke and Duchess of Belgarde
amused, but also touched their fellow prisoners. Among these was a
pretty boy of sixteen, the Vicomte d’Aronda. His father had died, as
had Victor, Count of Floramour, gallantly fighting in La Vendée. His
mother and sister had perished in the embrace of Madame Guillotine.
The boy alone remained. He felt himself every inch a man, and showed
more than a man’s courage. He was immensely captivated by the Duke of
Belgarde’s dashing air, which he still retained in spite of his patched
coat and shabby hat, and when the duke introduced the little vicomte
to Trimousette, the boy fell, if possible, more in love with her than
with the duke. Every day during their hour of exercise in the garden he
watched for them, and his boyish face reddened with pleasure when they
would ask him to join them on their promenade up and down the broken
flags. It diverted the duke to pretend to be jealous of so gallant a
fellow as the little vicomte, and the boy himself, half bashful and
half saucy, was charmed with the notion of being treated as a gay dog.
Neither the duke nor Trimousette ever spoke to the boy of the fate
that lay before him, as well as themselves, for he was so young--but
sixteen years old--and the soul is not full fledged at sixteen. One
day, however, the lad himself broached the subject.
“You see, madame and monsieur,” he said, quite serenely, “all the men
of my line have known how to die, whether in their beds of old age, or
falling from their horses in battle, and I, too, know how to die. I
shall be perfectly easy, and not let the villains who execute me see
that I care anything about it. My mother died as bravely as the Queen
herself; so did my sister, only twenty years old; and I shall not
disgrace them. But I should like very much to go the same day with you.
It would seem quite lonely to walk in this garden without you.”
When he said this, a woman’s passion of pity for the boy overwhelmed
Trimousette. She felt nothing like pity for her own fate or that of
the man she loved; they had entered into Paradise before their time,
that was all. But the boy was too young to have had even a glimpse of
that Paradise. At least he would go in his white-souled youth, and this
thought comforted Trimousette.
So passed the happiest month of Trimousette’s life. Her pale cheek grew
rosy and rounded like a child’s. Her black eyes lost their tragic and
melancholy expression and now shone with a soft splendor of deep peace
and even joy. Trimousette, Duchess of Belgarde, had come into her own
at last. She received from her husband the constant tribute of his
adoring and admiring love. When she glanced up from her sewing, it was
to find the duke’s eyes lifted from his book or his writing and fixed
upon her. If she moved across the narrow little cell, he watched her,
noting the grace of her movements. He told her twenty times a day that
she had the most beautiful, dainty feet in the world. When she sang
her little songs to him in a small pretty voice, the duke thought it
the most exquisite melody he had ever heard. They were as far removed
from the world as if they were upon another planet, and standing on the
lonely peak of existence between the two abysms from which man emerges
and into which he descends, it was as if they contained in themselves
the universe.
It was now April; the days were long and bright, and the nights short
and brilliant with moonlight and star shine. One day--it was the
twenty-first of April--the air was so warm and Maylike that Trimousette
laid aside her heavy black gown and put on the only other one she
possessed--her white one, which she had saved for her bridal with
death. Her husband had not seen her in a white gown for a long, long
time, and paid her such loverlike compliments that Trimousette blushed
with delight. When the time came for them to go into the gardens for
their one hour of fresh air many of the prisoners remarked upon
Trimousette’s white gown, and the little Vicomte d’Aronda, coming up,
said gallantly:
“Madame, I beg to present you with a bouquet I gathered for you this
morning,” and handed her five puny dandelions and some milkweed, tied
together with a bit of grass.
Trimousette was charmed, and thanked the boy so prettily that he
blushed redder than ever, and the duke declared the vicomte was a
dangerous fellow with the ladies--at which the lad answered saucily:
“Ah, monsieur, if I could live until I am grown up! Then I should
indeed be devoted to the ladies.”
The duke turned away his head. The boy was but sixteen years old and he
would not live to be much older.
That day was illuminated for Trimousette; it was so softly bright. As
the afternoon wore on, its languid beauty, its sad sweetness entered
into the soul of Trimousette. She did not busy herself as usual with
the little tasks she had devised for herself, but sat and moved in a
soft and composed reverie. Then, for a long time she watched the rude
sundial, studying the motto, and, almost involuntarily, she wrote upon
the table with her pen the old motto about the passing of the shadows
called man. She was serious, but not sad, and when the duke, taking her
hand, said to her:
“My little Trimousette, does your heart ache because we, shadows that
we are, shall no more pass this way?” Trimousette replied:
“I tell you truly, my heart has not once ached for myself since I have
been in this prison.”
And with a lovely sidelong glance from her black eyes, now no longer
sad, she continued, smiling:
“We have had our honeymoon, and no price can be too dear for that.”
For the hundredth time the duke begged her pardon for those early
years of neglect, and Trimousette, answering his burning kisses,
whispered:
“It does not matter now. All the great joys and griefs color the past
as well as the present. Since you were to love me, I could wait.”
The perfect day had a sunset of unearthly beauty. Together at the
low-arched window in the great prison wall Trimousette and her best
beloved watched the rosy sunset glow give way to the keen flashing
stars shining in the deep blue heavens. They talked a little, softly,
but presently an eloquent silence fell between them. Trimousette’s
head was upon her husband’s shoulder, and after a time she slept. The
duke drew her mantle about her and held her close. And thus, in warmth
and peace and love, Trimousette slept an hour. It was close upon nine
o’clock and a great vivid moon flooded the little cell with its silvery
radiance when the duke heard the key turning quietly in the heavy
lock. Duval, the turnkey, entered, and obeying a sign from the duke,
walked noiselessly toward him. The turnkey’s coarse face was pale, and
his rough hands shook. He said in a whisper to the duke:
“It is to-morrow--at seven in the evening--sunset time.”
The duke nodded coolly. The hour being at hand he was all courage.
The turnkey pointed to the sleeping Trimousette, then turned away
putting his sleeve to his face. Trimousette stirred, and withdrawing
herself from the duke’s arm, looked with calm, wide-open eyes from her
husband to the turnkey and back again. In the strong white moonlight
she saw clearly the faces of both men.
“It is to-morrow, I think,” she said.
“It is to-morrow,” replied the duke, without a tremor.
“Monsieur Robespierre--” began the turnkey, and then in terror and
rage stopped, shaking his fist in the direction of the Rue St. Honoré,
where Robespierre lodged.
“After all, it is well to leave a feast before the candles are burned
out,” said the duke, smiling, and Trimousette added:
“It is not Monsieur Robespierre. It is the will of the good God who
calls us, and we pass over the short bridge, not the long one of age
and disease, but the shortest of all--and we pass together.”
The turnkey kept on in a shaking voice:
“Not a soul but you knows who is to be posted to-morrow, but I can tell
you of two--the sister of Louis Capet, Madame Elizabeth, and the little
boy who calls himself Vicomte d’Aronda, and saunters about the garden
so jauntily.”
“It is a great honor to us that we go with the King’s sister, and as
for the little lad--well, he has no father, no mother, no brother, no
sister----”
It was the duke who said this. Trimousette had never shown something
like weakness about the boy, and, falling back in her chair, struck her
hands together with a gesture of anguish.
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