“Never mind! Go back and tell the countess, that, if she does not come
out, I shall go in this moment; that, if it must be, I shall force my
way in; that I shall call for help; that nothing will keep me. I must
absolutely see her.”
“But, madam”--
“Go! Don’t you see that it is a question of life and death?”
There was such authority in her voice, that the watchman no longer
hesitated. He went in once more, and reappeared a moment after.
“Go in,” he said to the young girl.
She went in, and found herself in a little anteroom which preceded the
office of the commonwealth attorney. A large lamp illuminated the room.
The door leading to the room in which the count was lying was closed.
In the centre of the room stood the Countess Claudieuse. All these
successive blows had not broken her indomitable energy. She looked pale,
but calm.
“Since you insist upon it, madam,” she began, “I come to tell you
myself that I cannot listen to you. Are you not aware that I am standing
between two open graves,--that of my poor girl, who is dying at my
house, and that of my husband, who is breathing his last in there?”
She made a motion as if she were about to retire; but Dionysia stopped
her by a threatening look, and said with a trembling voice,--
“If you go back into that room where your husband is, I shall go back
with you, and I shall speak before him. I shall ask you right before
him, how you dare order a priest away from his bedside at the moment
of death, and whether, after having robbed him of all his happiness in
life, you mean to make him unhappy in all eternity.”
Instinctively the countess drew back.
“I do not understand you,” she said.
“Yes, you do understand me, madam. Why will you deny it? Do you not see
that I know every thing, and that I have guessed what you have not told
me? Jacques was your lover; and your husband has had his revenge.”
“Ah!” cried the countess, “that is too much; that is too much!”
“And you have permitted it,” Dionysia went on with breathless haste;
“and you did not come, and cry out in open court that your husband was
a false witness! What a woman you must be! You do not mind it, that your
love carries a poor unfortunate man to the galleys. You mean to live on
with this thought in your heart, that the man whom you love is innocent,
and nevertheless, disgraced forever, and cut off from human society. A
priest might induce the count to retract his statement, you know very
well; and hence you refuse to let the priest from Brechy come to his
bedside. And what is the end and aim of all your crimes? To save your
false reputation as an honest woman. Ah! that is miserable; that is
mean; that is infamous!”
The countess was roused at last. What all M. Folgat’s skill and ability
had not been able to accomplish, Dionysia obtained in an instant by the
force of her passion. Throwing aside her mask, the countess exclaimed
with a perfect burst of rage,--
“Well, then, no, no! I have not acted so, and permitted all this to
happen, because I care for my reputation. My reputation!--what does it
matter? It was only a week ago, when Jacques had succeeded in escaping
from prison, I offered to flee with him. He had only to say a word, and
I should have given up my family, my children, my country, every thing,
for him. He answered, ‘Rather the galleys!’”
In the midst of all her fearful sufferings, Dionysia’s heart filled with
unspeakable happiness as she heard these words. Ah! now she could no
longer doubt Jacques.
“He has condemned himself, you see,” continued the countess. “I was
quite willing to ruin myself for him, but certainly not for another
woman.”
“And that other woman--no doubt you mean me!”
“Yes!--you for whose sake he abandoned me,--you whom he was going
to marry,--you with whom he hoped to enjoy long happy years, and a
happiness not furtive and sinful like ours, but a legitimate, honest
happiness.”
Tears were trembling in Dionysia’s eyes. She was beloved: she thought of
what she must suffer who was not beloved.
“And yet I should have been generous,” she murmured. The countess broke
out into a fierce, savage laugh.
“And the proof of it is,” said the young girl, “that I came to offer you
a bargain.”
“A bargain?”
“Yes. Save Jacques, and, by all that is sacred to me in the world, I
promise I will enter a convent: I will disappear, and you shall never
hear my name any more.”
Intense astonishment seized the countess, and she looked at Dionysia
with a glance full of doubt and mistrust. Such devotion seemed to her
too sublime not to conceal some snare.
“You would really do that?” she asked.
“Unhesitatingly.”
“You would make a great sacrifice for my benefit?”
“For yours? No, madam, for Jacques’s.”
“You love him very dearly, do you?”
“I love him dearly enough to prefer his happiness to my own a thousand
times over. Even if I were buried in the depths of a convent, I should
still have the consolation of knowing that he owed his rehabilitation to
me; and I should suffer less in knowing that he belonged to another than
that he was innocent, and yet condemned.”
But, in proportion as the young girl thus confirmed her sincerity,
the brow of the countess grew darker and sterner, and passing blushes
mantled her cheek. At last she said with haughty irony,--
“Admirable!”
“Madam!”
“You condescend to give up M. de Boiscoran. Will that make him love
me? You know very well he will not. You know that he loves you alone.
Heroism with such conditions is easy enough. What have you to fear?
Buried in a convent, he will love you only all the more ardently, and he
will execrate me all the more fervently.”
“He shall never know any thing of our bargain!”
“Ah! What does that matter? He will guess it, if you do not tell him.
No: I know what awaits me. I have felt it now for two years,--this agony
of seeing him becoming daily more detached from me. What have I not done
to keep him near me! How I have stooped to meanness, to falsehood,
to keep him a single day longer, perhaps a single hour! But all was
useless. I was a burden to him. He loved me no longer; and my love
became to him a heavier load than the cannon-ball which they will fasten
to his chains at the galleys.”
Dionysia shuddered.
“That is horrible!” she murmured.
“Horrible! Yes, but true. You look amazed. That is because you have as
yet only seen the morning dawn of your love: wait for the dark evening,
and you will understand me. Is not the story of all of us women the
same! I have seen Jacques at my feet as you see him at yours: the vows
he swears to you, he once swore to me; and he swore them to me with the
same voice, tremulous with passion, and with the same burning glances.
But you think you will be his wife, and I never was. What does that
matter? What does he tell you? That he will love you forever, because
his love is under the protection of God and of men. He told me,
precisely because our love was not thus protected, that we should be
united by indissoluble bonds,--bonds stronger than all others. You have
his promise: so had I. And the proof of it is that I gave him every
thing,--my honor and the honor of my family, and that I would have
given him still more, if there had been any more to give. And now to be
betrayed, forsaken, despised, to sink lower and lower, until at last
I must become the object of your pity! To have fallen so low, that you
should dare come and offer me to give up Jacques for my benefit! Ah,
that is maddening! And I should let the vengeance I hold in my hands
slip from me at your bidding! I should be stupid enough, blind enough,
to allow myself to be touched by your hypocritical tears! I should
secure your happiness by the sacrifice of my reputation! No, madam,
cherish no such hope!”
Her voice expired in her throat in a kind of toneless rattle. She walked
up and down a few times in the room. Then she placed herself straight
before Dionysia, and, looking fixedly into her eyes, she asked,--
“Who suggested to you this plan of coming here, this supreme insult
which you tried to inflict upon me?”
Dionysia was seized with unspeakable horror, and hardly found heart to
reply.
“No one,” she murmured.
“M. Folgat?”
“Knows nothing of it.”
“And Jacques?”
“I have not seen him. The thought occurred to me quite suddenly, like an
inspiration on high. When Dr. Seignebos told me that you had refused
to admit the priest from Brechy, I said to myself, ‘This is the last
misfortune, and the greatest of them all! If Count Claudieuse dies
without retracting, Jacques can never be fully restored, whatever may
happen hereafter, not even if his innocence should be established.’ Then
I made up my mind to come to you. Ah! it was a hard task. But I was
in hopes I might touch your heart, or that you might be moved by the
greatness of my sacrifice.”
The countess was really moved. There is no heart absolutely bad, as
there is none altogether good. As she listened to Dionysia’s passionate
entreaty, her resolution began to grow weaker.
“Would it be such a great sacrifice?” she asked.
Tears sprang to the eyes of the poor young girl.
“Alas!” she said, “I offer you my life. I know very well you will not be
long jealous of me.”
She was interrupted by groans, which seemed to come from the room in
which the count was lying.
The countess half-opened the door; and immediately a feeble, and yet
imperious voice was heard calling out,--
“Genevieve, I say, Genevieve!”
“I am coming, my dear, in a moment,” replied the countess.
“What security can you give me,” she said, in a hard and stern voice,
after having closed the door again,--“what security do you give me, that
if Jacques’s innocence were established, and he reinstated, you would
not forget your promises?”
“Ah, madam! How or upon what do you want me to swear that I am ready
to disappear. Choose your own securities, and I will do whatever you
require.”