Toward seven o'clock in the evening of a day in the year 1842, ten
years after the events we have here recorded, a heavy carriage stopped
before the gate of the Carmelite convent at Chartres.
The carriage contained five persons: two children eight and nine years
old, a gentleman and lady,--the first about thirty-five, the second
thirty,--and a peasant, bent with age but still vigorous in spite of
his white hair. Although his dress was humble, this peasant occupied
the seat beside the lady; one of the children was sitting on his knee
and playing with the rings of a thick steel chain which fastened his
watch to the button-hole of his waistcoat, while he himself passed his
brown and shrivelled hand through the silky hair of the little one.
At the jar of the carriage, as it turned from the paved high-road into
the faubourg Saint-Jean, the lady put her head out of the window; then
she drew it back with an expression of pain as she saw the high walls
that surrounded the convent, and the gloomy portal which gave entrance
to it.
The postilion dismounted, and going, to the door of the carriage
said:--
"This is the place."
The lady pressed the hand of her husband, who was seated opposite to
her, while two large tears rolled down her cheeks.
"Go, Mary, and take courage," said the young man, in whom our readers
will recognize Baron Michel de la Logerie. "I regret that the convent
rules will not let me share this duty with you. It is the first time
in ten years we have suffered apart."
"You will speak to her of me, will you not?" said the old peasant.
"Yes, my Jean," answered Mary.
The young woman sprang from the carriage and knocked at the gate. The
sound of the knocker gave a funeral note, which echoed through the
vaulted portal.
"Mère Sainte-Marthe?" said the lady when her summons was answered.
"Are you the person our mother is expecting?" asked the Carmelite.
"Yes, sister."
"Then come in. You shall see her; but remember, our rule requires
that, although she is our Superior, you can see her only in presence
of a sister; and she forbids you absolutely to speak to her, even in
these last moments, of the earthly things she has left behind her."
Mary bowed her head.
The Carmelite went first and conducted the Baronne de la Logerie along
a damp, dark corridor, in which were a dozen doors; she opened one of
these doors and stood aside to allow the lady to enter. Mary hesitated
an instant; she was choking with emotion; then she regained her
self-command, crossed the threshold, and found herself in a little
cell about eight feet square.
In this cell, for all furniture, was a bed, a chair, and a
_prie-dieu_; for all ornament, a few holy images fastened to the bare
walls, and an ebony and brass crucifix, which stretched out its arms
above the _prie-dieu_.
Mary saw nothing of all that. On the bed lay a woman whose face had
taken the color and the transparency of wax, and whose discolored lips
seemed about to exhale their parting breath.
This woman was, or rather, had been Bertha. She was now naught else
than the Mère Sainte-Marthe, superior of the convent of the Carmelites
at Chartres,--soon to be only a corpse.
When she saw the lady enter the dying woman stretched forth her arms,
and Mary fled to them. Long they held themselves embraced; Mary
bathing with tears her sister's face, Bertha gasping,--for in her
eyes, hollowed by the austerities of the cloister, there seemed to be
no more tears.
The Carmelite sister, who had seated herself on the chair and was
reading her breviary, was, however, not so occupied with her prayers
that she did not notice what was passing before her. She probably
thought these embraces were lasting too long, for she coughed
significantly.
Mère Sainte-Marthe gently pushed Mary away from her, but did not
release her hand, which she held in hers.
"Sister! sister!" murmured Mary, "who could have told me we should
meet thus?"
"It is God's will, to which we must submit," replied the Carmelite
mother.
"His will is sometimes very stern," sighed Mary.
"How can you say so, sister? That will is gentle and most merciful to
me. God, who might have left me longer on this earth, deigns to recall
me to Him."
"You will meet our father above," said Mary.
"And whom do I leave behind me?"
"Our good Jean Oullier, who lives and loves you always, Bertha."
"Thank you; and whom else?"
"My husband,--and two children, who are named, the boy, Pierre, the
girl, Bertha. I have taught them to bless you daily."
A faint color came upon the cheeks of the dying woman.
"Dear children!" she murmured, "if God grants me a place beside Him, I
promise to pray for them above."
And the dying soul began on earth the prayer it was to end in heaven.
In the midst of that prayer and in the silence of that cell, the
striking of a clock was heard, then the tinkling of a bell, and the
sound of feet approaching along the corridor. They were bringing the
viaticum.
Mary fell on her knees by Bertha's pillow. The priest entered, holding
the sacred chalice in his left hand, and in his right the consecrated
wafer.
At this moment Mary felt the hand of Bertha seeking hers; for the
purpose, as she thought, of pressing it. She was mistaken; Bertha
slipped into her sister's hand an object which she felt to be a
locket. She tried to look at it.
"No no," said Bertha, "wait till I am dead."
Mary made a sign of obedience and bowed her head upon her clasped
hands.
The cell was now filled with nuns, all kneeling; and as far as could
be seen along the corridor were others in their gloomy robes kneeling
and praying.
The dying woman seemed to recover some strength with which to go into
the presence of her Creator; she lifted herself up, murmuring:--
"I am ready, my God!"
The priest laid the wafer on her lips, and she fell back gently on the
bed with closed eyes and clasped hands. Except for the motion of her
lips, she seemed to have died, so pale was her face, so feeble the
breath that issued from her bosom.
The priest concluded the other ceremonies of the extreme unction, but
she did not open her eyes. He left the cell, and the assistants
followed him.
The Carmelite nun, who had first met Mary, now came to her where she
knelt, and touching her gently on the shoulder, said:--
"My sister, the rule of our order forbids that you should stay any
longer in this cell."
"Bertha! Bertha!" said Mary, sobbing, "do you hear what they say to
me? My God! after living together twenty years without being parted
for a single day, and then separated for eleven years,--not to be
allowed one hour together when we are parting for eternity!"
"You may stay in the house until I am dead, my sister and it will make
me happy to think you are near me and praying for me."
Mary bent down to kiss her dying sister for the last time, but the nun
interposed, saying:--
"Do not turn our blessed mother's mind from the celestial path she now
has entered, by vain, earthly thoughts."
"Oh, I will not leave her thus!" cried Mary, flinging herself on
Bertha's bed and putting her lips to those of her sister. Bertha's
lips replied by a feeble quiver, then she gently pushed her sister
away from her. But the hand that made this motion had no power to
rejoin the other, and it fell inert upon the bed.
The nun advanced, and without a tear, without a sigh, without a sign
of emotion upon her face, she took that dying hand, joined it to the
other, and laid them clasped upon Bertha's breast. Then she gently
pushed Mary to the door.
"Oh, Bertha! Bertha!" cried her sister, breaking into sobs.
It seemed to her that a murmur echoed back these sobs, and in that
murmur she fancied that she heard the name of "Mary!"
She was in the corridor; the door of the cell was closed behind her.
"Oh, let me see her!" she cried. "Let me see her once more,--only
once!"
But the nun stretched out her arms and barred the way.
"I submit," said Mary, blinded by her tears. "Take me where you
choose, sister."
The nun led her to an empty cell, the occupant of which had died the
night before. Mary saw through her tears a _prie-dieu_ surmounted by a
crucifix, and she went, half stumbling, to kneel there.
For an hour she remained absorbed in prayer. At the end of an hour the
nun returned and said, in the same cold impassible voice:--
"Mère Sainte-Marthe is dead."
"May I see her?" asked Mary.
"The rule of our order forbids it," replied the Carmelite.
Mary dropped her head into her hands with a sigh. One of those hands
still clasped the object Bertha had given her at the moment she was
about to receive, for the last time, the blessed sacrament. Mère
Sainte-Marthe was dead, and Mary was free to look at what she had
given her.
It was, as she knew already from its shape, a locket. Mary opened it.
It contained some hair and a paper. The hair was the color of Michel's
hair; the paper contained these words: "Cut during his sleep on the
night of June 5, 1832."
"O, my God!" murmured Mary, raising her eyes to the crucifix, "my God!
in thy mercy receive her! for thy passion lasted but forty days, and
hers has lasted eleven years!"
Putting the locket upon her heart, Mary went down the cold, damp
stairway of the convent.
The carriage and those it contained were still waiting before the
gate.
"Well?" asked Michel, opening the door and making a step toward his
wife.
"Alas, it is all over!" replied Mary, throwing herself into his arms.
"She died promising to pray for us above."
"Happy children!" said Jean Oullier, laying his hands, one on the head
of the little boy, the other on that of the little girl. "Happy
children! walk fearlessly through life, for a martyr watches over you
in heaven!"