It was one of the earliest June days of the year 1844. A lady of fifty
or thereabouts, for she looked older than her actual age, was pacing up
and down one of the sunny paths in the garden of a great mansion in
the Rue Plumet in Paris. It was noon. The lady took two or three turns
along the gently winding garden walk, careful never to lose sight of a
certain row of windows, to which she seemed to give her whole attention;
then she sat down on a bench, a piece of elegant semi-rusticity made of
branches with the bark left on the wood. From the place where she sat
she could look through the garden railings along the inner boulevards to
the wonderful dome of the Invalides rising above the crests of a
forest of elm-trees, and see the less striking view of her own grounds
terminating in the gray stone front of one of the finest hotels in the
Faubourg Saint-Germain.
Silence lay over the neighboring gardens, and the boulevards stretching
away to the Invalides. Day scarcely begins at noon in that aristocratic
quarter, and masters and servants are all alike asleep, or just
awakening, unless some young lady takes it into her head to go for an
early ride, or a gray-headed diplomatist rises betimes to redraft a
protocol.
The elderly lady stirring abroad at that hour was the Marquise
d’Aiglemont, the mother of Mme. de Saint-Héreen, to whom the great house
belonged. The Marquise had made over the mansion and almost her whole
fortune to her daughter, reserving only an annuity for herself.
The Comtesse Moïna de Saint-Héreen was Mme. d’Aiglemont’s youngest
child. The Marquise had made every sacrifice to marry her daughter to
the eldest son of one of the greatest houses of France; and this was
only what might have been expected, for the lady had lost her sons,
first one and then the other. Gustave, Marquis d’Aiglemont, had died of
the cholera; Abel, the second, had fallen in Algeria. Gustave had left
a widow and children, but the dowager’s affection for her sons had
been only moderately warm, and for the next generation it was decidedly
tepid. She was always civil to her daughter-in-law, but her feeling
towards the young Marquise was the distinctly conventional affection
which good taste and good manners require us to feel for our relatives.
The fortunes of her dead children having been settled, she could devote
her savings and her own property to her darling Moïna.
Moïna, beautiful and fascinating from childhood, was Mme. d’Aiglemont’s
favorite; loved beyond all the others with an instinctive or involuntary
love, a fatal drawing of the heart, which sometimes seems inexplicable,
sometimes, and to a close observer, only too easy to explain. Her
darling’s pretty face, the sound of Moïna’s voice, her ways, her manner,
her looks and gestures, roused all the deepest emotions that can stir
a mother’s heart with trouble, rapture, or delight. The springs of the
Marquise’s life, of yesterday, to-morrow, and to-day, lay in that young
heart. Moïna, with better fortune, had survived four older children.
As a matter of fact, Mme. d’Aiglemont had lost her eldest daughter, a
charming girl, in a most unfortunate manner, said gossip, nobody knew
exactly what became of her; and then she lost a little boy of five by a
dreadful accident.
The child of her affections had, however, been spared to her, and
doubtless the Marquise saw the will of Heaven in that fact; for those
who had died, she kept but very shadowy recollections in some far-off
corner of her heart; her memories of her dead children were like the
headstones on a battlefield, you can scarcely see them for the flowers
that have sprung up about them since. Of course, if the world had
chosen, it might have said some hard truths about the Marquise, might
have taken her to task for shallowness and an overweening preference for
one child at the expense of the rest; but the world of Paris is swept
along by the full flood of new events, new ideas, and new fashions, and
it was inevitable the Mme. d’Aiglemont should be in some sort allowed
to drop out of sight. So nobody thought of blaming her for coldness
or neglect which concerned no one, whereas her quick, apprehensive
tenderness for Moïna was found highly interesting by not a few who
respected it as a sort of superstition. Besides, the Marquise scarcely
went into society at all; and the few families who knew her thought of
her as a kindly, gentle, indulgent woman, wholly devoted to her family.
What but a curiosity, keen indeed, would seek to pry beneath the surface
with which the world is quite satisfied? And what would we not pardon
to old people, if only they will efface themselves like shadows, and
consent to be regarded as memories and nothing more!
Indeed, Mme. d’Aiglemont became a kind of example complacently held up
by the younger generation to fathers of families, and frequently cited
to mothers-in-law. She had made over her property to Moïna in her own
lifetime; the young Countess’ happiness was enough for her, she only
lived in her daughter. If some cautious old person or morose uncle here
and there condemned the course with--“Perhaps Mme. d’Aiglemont may be
sorry some day that she gave up her fortune to her daughter; she may
be sure of Moïna, but how can she be equally sure of her
son-in-law?”--these prophets were cried down on all sides, and from all
sides a chorus of praise went up for Moïna.
“It ought to be said, in justice to Mme. de Saint-Héreen, that her
mother cannot feel the slightest difference,” remarked a young married
woman. “Mme. d’Aiglemont is admirably well housed. She has a carriage at
her disposal, and can go everywhere just as she used to do--”
“Except to the Italiens,” remarked a low voice. (This was an elderly
parasite, one of those persons who show their independence--as they
think--by riddling their friends with epigrams.) “Except to the
Italiens. And if the dowager cares for anything on this earth but her
daughter--it is music. Such a good performer she was in her time! But
the Countess’ box is always full of young butterflies, and the Countess’
mother would be in the way; the young lady is talked about already as a
great flirt. So the poor mother never goes to the Italiens.”
“Mme. de Saint-Héreen has delightful ‘At Homes’ for her mother,” said a
rosebud. “All Paris goes to her salon.
“And no one pays any attention to the Marquise,” returned the parasite.
“The fact is that Mme. d’Aiglemont is never alone,” remarked a coxcomb,
siding with the young women.
“In the morning,” the old observer continued in a discreet voice, “in
the morning dear Moïna is asleep. At four o’clock dear Moïna drives
in the Bois. In the evening dear Moïna goes to a ball or to the
Bouffes.--Still, it is certainly true that Mme. d’Aiglemont has the
privilege of seeing her dear daughter while she dresses, and again at
dinner, if dear Moïna happens to dine with her mother. Not a week ago,
sir,” continued the elderly person, laying his hand on the arm of the
shy tutor, a new arrival in the house, “not a week ago, I saw the poor
mother, solitary and sad, by her own fireside.--‘What is the matter?’ I
asked. The Marquise looked up smiling, but I am quite sure that she had
been crying.--‘I was thinking that it is a strange thing that I should
be left alone when I have had five children,’ she said, ‘but that is
our destiny! And besides, I am happy when I know that Moïna is enjoying
herself.’--She could say that to me, for I knew her husband when he was
alive. A poor stick he was, and uncommonly lucky to have such a wife; it
was certainly owing to her that he was made a peer of France, and had a
place at Court under Charles X.”
Yet such mistaken ideas get about in social gossip, and such mischief
is done by it, that the historian of manners is bound to exercise his
discretion, and weigh the assertions so recklessly made. After all, who
is to say that either mother or daughter was right or wrong? There is
but One who can read and judge their hearts! And how often does He wreak
His vengeance in the family circle, using throughout all time children
as His instruments against their mothers, and fathers against their
sons, raising up peoples against kings, and princes against peoples,
sowing strife and division everywhere? And in the world of ideas, are
not opinions and feelings expelled by new feelings and opinions, much
as withered leaves are thrust forth by the young leaf-buds in the
spring?--all in obedience to the immutable Scheme; all to some end which
God alone knows. Yet, surely, all things proceed to Him, or rather, to
Him all things return.
Such thoughts of religion, the natural thoughts of age, floated up
now and again on the current of Mme. d’Aiglemont’s thoughts; they were
always dimly present in her mind, but sometimes they shone out clearly,
sometimes they were carried under, like flowers tossed on the vexed
surface of a stormy sea.
She sat on a garden-seat, tired with walking, exhausted with much
thinking--with the long thoughts in which a whole lifetime rises up
before the mind, and is spread out like a scroll before the eyes of
those who feel that Death is near.
If a poet had chanced to pass along the boulevard, he would have found
an interesting picture in the face of this woman, grown old before her
time. As she sat under the dotted shadow of the acacia, the shadow the
acacia casts at noon, a thousand thoughts were written for all the world
to see on her features, pale and cold even in the hot, bright sunlight.
There was something sadder than the sense of waning life in that
expressive face, some trouble that went deeper than the weariness of
experience. It was a face of a type that fixes you in a moment among a
host of characterless faces that fail to draw a second glance, a face
to set you thinking. Among a thousand pictures in a gallery, you are
strongly impressed by the sublime anguish on the face of some Madonna
of Murillo’s; by some _Beatrice Cenci_ in which Guido’s art portrays the
most touching innocence against a background of horror and crime; by the
awe and majesty that should encircle a king, caught once and for ever
by Velasquez in the sombre face of a Philip II., and so is it with some
living human faces; they are tyrannous pictures which speak to you,
submit you to searching scrutiny, and give response to your inmost
thoughts, nay, there are faces that set forth a whole drama, and Mme.
d’Aiglemont’s stony face was one of these awful tragedies, one of such
faces as Dante Alighieri saw by thousands in his vision.
For the little season that a woman’s beauty is in flower it serves her
admirably well in the dissimulation to which her natural weakness and
our social laws condemn her. A young face and rich color, and eyes that
glow with light, a gracious maze of such subtle, manifold lines and
curves, flawless and perfectly traced, is a screen that hides everything
that stirs the woman within. A flush tells nothing, it only heightens
the coloring so brilliant already; all the fires that burn within
can add little light to the flame of life in eyes which only seem the
brighter for the flash of a passing pain. Nothing is so discreet as a
young face, for nothing is less mobile; it has the serenity, the surface
smoothness, and the freshness of a lake. There is not character in
women’s faces before the age of thirty. The painter discovers nothing
there but pink and white, and the smile and expression that repeat the
same thought in the same way--a thought of youth and love that goes no
further than youth and love. But the face of an old woman has expressed
all that lay in her nature; passion has carved lines on her features;
love and wifehood and motherhood, and extremes of joy and anguish,
having wrung them, and left their traces in a thousand wrinkles, all
of which speak a language of their own; then it is that a woman’s face
becomes sublime in its horror, beautiful in its melancholy, grand in its
calm. If it is permissible to carry the strange metaphor still further,
it might be said that in the dried-up lake you can see the traces of
all the torrents that once poured into it and made it what it is. An old
face is nothing to the frivolous world; the frivolous world is shocked
by the sight of the destruction of such comeliness as it can understand;
a commonplace artist sees nothing there. An old face is the province of
the poets among poets of those who can recognize that something which
is called Beauty, apart from all the conventions underlying so many
superstitions in art and taste.
Though Mme. d’Aiglemont wore a fashionable bonnet, it was easy to see
that her once black hair had been bleached by cruel sorrows; yet her
good taste and the gracious acquired instincts of a woman of fashion
could be seen in the way she wore it, divided into two _bandeaux_,
following the outlines of a forehead that still retained some traces of
former dazzling beauty, worn and lined though it was. The contours
of her face, the regularity of her features, gave some idea, faint in
truth, of that beauty of which surely she had once been proud; but those
traces spoke still more plainly of the anguish which had laid it waste,
of sharp pain that had withered the temples, and made those hollows in
her cheeks, and empurpled the eyelids, and robbed them of their lashes,
and the eyes of their charm. She was in every way so noiseless; she
moved with a slow, self-contained gravity that showed itself in her
whole bearing, and struck a certain awe into others. Her diffident
manner had changed to positive shyness, due apparently to a habit now of
some years’ growth, of effacing herself in her daughter’s presence. She
spoke very seldom, and in the low tones used by those who perforce must
live within themselves a life of reflection and concentration. This
demeanor led others to regard her with an indefinable feeling which was
neither awe nor compassion, but a mysterious blending of the many ideas
awakened in us by compassion and awe. Finally, there was something in
her wrinkles, in the lines of her face, in the look of pain in those
wan eyes of hers, that bore eloquent testimony to tears that never had
fallen, tears that had been absorbed by her heart. Unhappy creatures,
accustomed to raise their eyes to heaven, in mute appeal against the
bitterness of their lot, would have seen at once from her eyes that she
was broken in to the cruel discipline of ceaseless prayer, would have
discerned the almost imperceptible symptoms of the secret bruises which
destroy all the flowers of the soul, even the sentiment of motherhood.
Painters have colors for these portraits, but words, and the mental
images called up by words, fail to reproduce such impressions
faithfully; there are mysterious signs and tokens in the tones of the
coloring and in the look of human faces, which the mind only seizes
through the sense of sight; and the poet is fain to record the tale
of the events which wrought the havoc to make their terrible ravages
understood.
The face spoke of cold and steady storm, an inward conflict between a
mother’s long-suffering and the limitations of our nature, for our human
affections are bounded by our humanity, and the infinite has no place
in finite creatures. Sorrow endured in silence had at last produced an
indefinable morbid something in this woman. Doubtless mental anguish had
reacted on the physical frame, and some disease, perhaps an aneurism,
was undermining Julie’s life. Deep-seated grief lies to all appearance
very quietly in the depths where it is conceived, yet, so still and
apparently dormant as it is, it ceaselessly corrodes the soul, like the
terrible acid which eats away crystal.
Two tears made their way down the Marquise’s cheeks; she rose to her
feet as if some thought more poignant than any that preceded it had cut
her to the quick. She had doubtless come to a conclusion as to Moïna’s
future; and now, foreseeing clearly all the troubles in store for her
child, the sorrows of her own unhappy life had begun to weigh once
more upon her. The key of her position must be sought in her daughter’s
situation.
The Comte de Saint-Héreen had been away for nearly six months on a
political mission. The Countess, whether from sheer giddiness, or in
obedience to the countless instincts of woman’s coquetry, or to essay
its power--with all the vanity of a frivolous fine lady, all the
capricious waywardness of a child--was amusing herself, during her
husband’s absence, by playing with the passion of a clever but heartless
man, distracted (so he said) with love, the love that combines readily
with every petty social ambition of a self-conceited coxcomb. Mme.
d’Aiglemont, whose long experience had given her a knowledge of life,
and taught her to judge of men and to dread the world, watched the
course of this flirtation, and saw that it could only end in one way,
if her daughter should fall into the hands of an utterly unscrupulous
intriguer. How could it be other than a terrible thought for her that
her daughter listened willingly to this _roue_? Her darling stood on the
brink of a precipice, she felt horribly sure of it, yet dared not hold
her back. She was afraid of the Countess. She knew too that Moïna would
not listen to her wise warnings; she knew that she had no influence
over that nature--iron for her, silken-soft for all others. Her mother’s
tenderness might have led her to sympathize with the troubles of a
passion called forth by the nobler qualities of a lover, but this was
no passion--it was coquetry, and the Marquise despised Alfred de
Vandenesse, knowing that he had entered upon this flirtation with Moïna
as if it were a game of chess.
But if Alfred de Vandenesse made her shudder with disgust, she was
obliged--unhappy mother!--to conceal the strongest reason for her
loathing in the deepest recesses of her heart. She was on terms of
intimate friendship with the Marquis de Vandenesse, the young man’s
father; and this friendship, a respectable one in the eyes of the world,
excused the son’s constant presence in the house, he professing an old
attachment, dating from childhood, for Mme. de Saint-Héreen. More than
this, in vain did Mme. d’Aiglemont nerve herself to come between Moïna
and Alfred de Vandenesse with a terrible word, knowing beforehand that
she should not succeed; knowing that the strong reason which ought to
separate them would carry no weight; that she should humiliate herself
vainly in her daughter’s eyes. Alfred was too corrupt; Moïna too clever
to believe the revelation; the young Countess would turn it off and
treat it as a piece of maternal strategy. Mme. d’Aiglemont had built
her prison walls with her own hands; she had immured herself only to
see Moïna’s happiness ruined thence before she died; she was to look on
helplessly at the ruin of the young life which had been her pride and
joy and comfort, a life a thousand times dearer to her than her
own. What words can describe anguish so hideous beyond belief, such
unfathomed depths of pain?
She waited for Moïna to rise, with the impatience and sickening dread
of a doomed man, who longs to have done with life, and turns cold at the
thought of the headsman. She had braced herself for a last effort, but
perhaps the prospect of the certain failure of the attempt was less
dreadful to her than the fear of receiving yet again one of those
thrusts that went to her very heart--before that fear her courage ebbed
away. Her mother’s love had come to this. To love her child, to be
afraid of her, to shrink from the thought of the stab, yet to go
forward. So great is a mother’s affection in a loving nature, that
before it can fade away into indifference the mother herself must die
or find support in some great power without her, in religion or another
love. Since the Marquise rose that morning, her fatal memory had called
up before her some of those things, so slight to all appearance, that
make landmarks in a life. Sometimes, indeed, a whole tragedy grows out
of a single gesture; the tone in which a few words were spoken rends a
whole life in two; a glance into indifferent eyes is the deathblow of
the gladdest love; and, unhappily, such gestures and such words were
only too familiar to Mme. d’Aiglemont--she had met so many glances that
wound the soul. No, there was nothing in those memories to bid her hope.
On the contrary, everything went to show that Alfred had destroyed her
hold on her daughter’s heart, that the thought of her was now associated
with duty--not with gladness. In ways innumerable, in things that were
mere trifles in themselves, the Countess’ detestable conduct rose
up before her mother; and the Marquise, it may be, looked on Moïna’s
undutifulness as a punishment, and found excuses for her daughter in the
will of Heaven, that so she still might adore the hand that smote her.
All these things passed through her memory that morning, and each
recollection wounded her afresh so sorely, that with a very little
additional pain her brimming cup of bitterness must have overflowed. A
cold look might kill her.
The little details of domestic life are difficult to paint; but one or
two perhaps will suffice to give an idea of the rest.
The Marquise d’Aiglemont, for instance, had grown rather deaf, but she
could never induce Moïna to raise her voice for her. Once, with the
naivete of suffering, she had begged Moïna to repeat some remark which
she had failed to catch, and Moïna obeyed, but with so bad a grace, that
Mme. d’Aiglemont had never permitted herself to make her modest request
again. Ever since that day when Moïna was talking or retailing a
piece of news, her mother was careful to come near to listen; but this
infirmity of deafness appeared to put the Countess out of patience,
and she would grumble thoughtlessly about it. This instance is one
from among very many that must have gone to the mother’s heart; and yet
nearly all of them might have escaped a close observer, they consisted
in faint shades of manner invisible to any but a woman’s eyes. Take
another example. Mme. d’Aiglemont happened to say one day that the
Princesse de Cadignan had called upon her. “Did she come to see _you_!”
Moïna exclaimed. That was all, but the Countess’ voice and manner
expressed surprise and well-bred contempt in semitones. Any heart,
still young and sensitive, might well have applauded the philanthropy of
savage tribes who kill off their old people when they grow too feeble
to cling to a strongly shaken bough. Mme. d’Aiglemont rose smiling, and
went away to weep alone.
Well-bred people, and women especially, only betray their feelings
by imperceptible touches; but those who can look back over their own
experience on such bruises as this mother’s heart received, know also
how the heart-strings vibrate to these light touches. Overcome by her
memories, Mme. d’Aiglemont recollected one of those microscopically
small things, so stinging and so painful was it that never till this
moment had she felt all the heartless contempt that lurked beneath
smiles.
At the sound of shutters thrown back at her daughter’s windows, she
dried her tears, and hastened up the pathway by the railings. As she
went, it struck her that the gardener had been unusually careful to rake
the sand along the walk which had been neglected for some little time.
As she stood under her daughter’s windows, the shutters were hastily
closed.
“Moïna, is it you?” she asked.
No answer.
The Marquise went on into the house.
“Mme. la Comtesse is in the little drawing-room,” said the maid, when
the Marquise asked whether Mme. de Saint-Héreen had finished dressing.
Mme. d’Aiglemont hurried to the little drawing-room; her heart was too
full, her brain too busy to notice matters so slight; but there on the
sofa sat the Countess in her loose morning-gown, her hair in disorder
under the cap tossed carelessly on her head, her feet thrust into
slippers. The key of her bedroom hung at her girdle. Her face, aglow
with color, bore traces of almost stormy thought.
“What makes people come in!” she cried, crossly. “Oh! it is you,
mother,” she interrupted herself, with a preoccupied look.
“Yes, child; it is your mother----”
Something in her tone turned those words into an outpouring of the
heart, the cry of some deep inward feeling, only to be described by the
word “holy.” So thoroughly in truth had she rehabilitated the sacred
character of a mother, that her daughter was impressed, and turned
towards her, with something of awe, uneasiness, and remorse in her
manner. The room was the furthest of a suite, and safe from indiscreet
intrusion, for no one could enter it without giving warning of approach
through the previous apartments. The Marquise closed the door.
“It is my duty, my child, to warn you in one of the most serious crises
in the lives of us women; you have perhaps reached it unconsciously, and
I am come to speak to you as a friend rather than as a mother. When you
married, you acquired freedom of action; you are only accountable to
your husband now; but I asserted my authority so little (perhaps I was
wrong), that I think I have a right to expect you to listen to me, for
once at least, in a critical position when you must need counsel. Bear
in mind, Moïna that you are married to a man of high ability, a man of
whom you may well be proud, a man who--”
“I know what you are going to say, mother!” Moïna broke in pettishly. “I
am to be lectured about Alfred--”
“Moïna,” the Marquise said gravely, as she struggled with her tears,
“you would not guess at once if you did not feel--”
“What?” asked Moïna, almost haughtily. “Why, really, mother--”
Mme. d’Aiglemont summoned up all her strength. “Moïna,” she said, “you
must attend carefully to this that I ought to tell you--”
“I am attending,” returned the Countess, folding her arms, and affecting
insolent submission. “Permit me, mother, to ring for Pauline,” she added
with incredible self-possession; “I will send her away first.”
She rang the bell.
“My dear child, Pauline cannot possibly hear--”
“Mamma,” interrupted the Countess, with a gravity which must have struck
her mother as something unusual, “I must--”
She stopped short, for the woman was in the room.
“Pauline, go _yourself_ to Baudran’s, and ask why my hat has not yet
been sent.”
Then the Countess reseated herself and scrutinized her mother. The
Marquise, with a swelling heart and dry eyes, in painful agitation,
which none but a mother can fully understand, began to open Moïna’s eyes
to the risk that she was running. But either the Countess felt hurt
and indignant at her mother’s suspicions of a son of the Marquis de
Vandenesse, or she was seized with a sudden fit of inexplicable levity
caused by the inexperience of youth. She took advantage of a pause.
“Mamma, I thought you were only jealous of _the father_--” she said,
with a forced laugh.
Mme. d’Aiglemont shut her eyes and bent her head at the words, with a
very faint, almost inaudible sigh. She looked up and out into space,
as if she felt the common overmastering impulse to appeal to God at the
great crises of our lives; then she looked at her daughter, and her eyes
were full of awful majesty and the expression of profound sorrow.
“My child,” she said, and her voice was hardly recognizable, “you have
been less merciful to your mother than he against whom she sinned; less
merciful than perhaps God Himself will be!”
Mme. d’Aiglemont rose; at the door she turned; but she saw nothing but
surprise in her daughter’s face. She went out. Scarcely had she reached
the garden when her strength failed her. There was a violent pain at her
heart, and she sank down on a bench. As her eyes wandered over the path,
she saw fresh marks on the path, a man’s footprints were distinctly
recognizable. It was too late, then, beyond a doubt. Now she began to
understand the reason for that order given to Pauline, and with these
torturing thoughts came a revelation more hateful than any that had
gone before it. She drew her own inferences--the son of the Marquis
de Vandenesse had destroyed all feeling of respect for her in her
daughter’s mind. The physical pain grew worse; by degrees she lost
consciousness, and sat like one asleep upon the garden-seat.
The Countess de Saint-Héreen, left to herself, thought that her mother
had given her a somewhat shrewd home-thrust, but a kiss and a few
attentions that evening would make all right again.
A shrill cry came from the garden. She leaned carelessly out, as
Pauline, not yet departed on her errand, called out for help, holding
the Marquise in her arms.
“Do not frighten my daughter!” those were the last words the mother
uttered.
Moïna saw them carry in a pale and lifeless form that struggled for
breath, and arms moving restlessly as in protest or effort to speak; and
overcome by the sight, Moïna followed in silence, and helped to undress
her mother and lay her on her bed. The burden of her fault was greater
than she could bear. In that supreme hour she learned to know her
mother--too late, she could make no reparation now. She would have them
leave her alone with her mother; and when there was no one else in the
room, when she felt that the hand which had always been so tender for
her was now grown cold to her touch, she broke out into weeping. Her
tears aroused the Marquise; she could still look at her darling
Moïna; and at the sound of sobbing, that seemed as if it must rend the
delicate, disheveled breast, could smile back at her daughter. That
smile taught the unnatural child that forgiveness is always to be found
in the great deep of a mother’s heart.
Servants on horseback had been dispatched at once for the physician and
surgeon and for Mme. d’Aiglemont’s grandchildren. Mme. d’Aiglemont the
younger and her little sons arrived with the medical men, a sufficiently
impressive, silent, and anxious little group, which the servants of the
house came to join. The young Marquise, hearing no sound, tapped gently
at the door. That signal, doubtless, roused Moïna from her grief, for
she flung open the doors and stood before them. No words could have
spoken more plainly than that disheveled figure looking out with haggard
eyes upon the assembled family. Before that living picture of Remorse
the rest were dumb. It was easy to see that the Marquise’s feet were
stretched out stark and stiff with the agony of death; and Moïna,
leaning against the door-frame, looking into their faces, spoke in a
hollow voice:
“I have lost my mother!”