THE DAUPHIN'S WIFE
About this time my companion and reputed sister died. Poor woman! She
was no grande dame, not even a spotless matron. In her past there had
been hours of anguish, despair and shame. An unremitting train of
misfortunes had dried the sources of her tears. It was misfortune which
had united our lives and welded my youth to her maturity. Despised by
the world, she found an asylum in me, and I, in my isolation, found pity
and kindness only in her. And I solemnly declare that she was gold
hidden beneath mire, for she gave me the shelter and warmth of a human
heart, without which I cannot live.
When she died in my arms, blessing me for my ministrations, I regretted
that I had written to you, for it seemed the most fitting consummation
of my life to pass the remainder of it as a Spandau watch-maker. In my
loneliness, I married a beautiful girl, daughter of a mechanic as
obscure as I. Having failed to receive an answer from you, I thought to
accomplish the extinction of a royal race by an alliance with this woman
of the people. A frenzy of vengeance and shame mastered me as I cemented
what I considered the pollution of your race and mine, by marrying this
pure, gentle girl.
To-day I realize my sin in refusing to thank God for the finding in my
path of the sweet blossom of love. Jeanne's affection should have been
more grateful than Marie's for it came in consequence of the sublime law
that merges one life into another and contained no element of reverence
for royalty. But I trampled on the tender fragrance of her devotion
during the beginning of our married life, in the arrogance of what I
considered my fallen state in being her companion. For hours would I sit
in gloomy silence. I could not smother the puerile vanity of earthly
grandeur which even in the Black Hole inflated me. Between me and the
gentle girl rose the high wall of ancestry, that destroyer of happiness,
which seeks to make us unlike other men. I kept from her the gloomy
secret of my origin and she shrank from me, almost seeking to ask my
forgiveness for being my wife.
When I knew the joy which you will never experience, Thérèse--that of
parenthood,--I called my daughter by the name which I had borne during
that ill-fated journey which cost our parents their crown and
life,--"Amélie." My mother seemed to live again in the child, and I
assured myself that the blood of Austria and Lorraine rose, asserting
its purity and protesting against admixture with a plebeian strain.