At the beginning of the following year, in spite of Madame Graslin’s
assumption of strength, her friends began to notice symptoms which
foreshadowed her coming death. To all the doctor’s remarks, and to the
inquiries of the most clear-sighted of her friends, Veronique made
the invariable answer that she was perfectly well. But when the spring
opened she went round to visit her forests, farms, and beautiful meadows
with a childlike joy and delight which betrayed to those who knew her
best a sad foreboding.
Finding himself obliged to build a small cemented wall between the dam
of the Gabou and the park of Montegnac along the base of the hill called
especially La Correze, Gerard took up the idea of enclosing the whole
forest and thus uniting it with the park. Madame Graslin agreed to this,
and appointed thirty thousand francs a year to this work, which would
take seven years to accomplish and would then withdraw that fine forest
from the rights exercised by government over the non-enclosed forests
of private individuals. The three ponds of the Gabou would thus become
a part of the park. These ponds, ambitiously called lakes, had each its
island.
This year, Gerard had prepared, in collusion with Grossetete, a surprise
for Madame Graslin’s birthday. He had built a little hermitage on the
largest of the islands, rustic on the outside and elegantly arranged
within. The old banker took part in the conspiracy, in which
Farrabesche, Fresquin, Clousier’s nephew, and nearly all the well-to-do
people in Montegnac co-operated. Grossetete sent down some beautiful
furniture. The clock tower, copied from that at Vevay, made a charming
effect in the landscape. Six boats, two for each pond, were secretly
built, painted, and rigged during the winter by Farrabesche and Guepin,
assisted by the carpenter of Montegnac.
When the day arrived (about the middle of May) after a breakfast
Madame Graslin gave to her friends, she was taken by them across the
park--which was finely laid out by Gerard, who, for the last five years,
had improved it like a landscape architect and naturalist--to the pretty
meadow of the valley of the Gabou, where, at the shore of the first
lake, two of the boats were floating. This meadow, watered by several
clear streamlets, lay at the foot of the fine ampitheatre where the
valley of the Gabou begins. The woods, cleared in a scientific manner,
so as to produce noble masses and vistas that were charming to the eye,
enclosed the meadow and gave it a solitude that was grateful to the
soul. Gerard had reproduced on an eminence that chalet in the valley of
Sion above the road to Brieg which travellers admire so much; here were
to be the dairy and the cow-sheds of the chateau. From its gallery the
eye roved over the landscape created by the engineer which the three
lakes made worthy of comparison with the beauties of Switzerland.
The day was beautiful. In the blue sky, not a cloud; on earth, all the
charming, graceful things the soil offers in the month of May. The trees
planted ten years earlier on the banks--weeping willows, osier, alder,
ash, the aspen of Holland, the poplars of Italy and Virginia, hawthorns
and roses, acacias, birches, all choice growths arranged as their nature
and the lay of the land made suitable--held amid their foliage a few
fleecy vapors, born of the waters, which rose like a slender smoke. The
surface of the lakelet, clear as a mirror and calm as the sky, reflected
the tall green masses of the forest, the tops of which, distinctly
defined in the limpid atmosphere, contrasted with the groves below
wrapped in their pretty veils. The lakes, separated by broad causeways,
were three mirrors showing different reflections, the waters of which
flowed from one to another in melodious cascades. These causeways were
used to go from lake to lake without passing round the shores. From the
chalet could be seen, through a vista among the trees, the thankless
waste of the chalk commons, resembling an open sea and contrasting with
the fresh beauty of the lakes and their verdure.
When Veronique saw the joyousness of her friends as they held out their
hands to help her into the largest of the boats, tears came into her
eyes and she kept silence till they touched the bank of the first
causeway. As she stepped into the second boat she saw the hermitage with
Grossetete sitting on a bench before it with all his family.
“Do they wish to make me regret dying?” she said to the rector.
“We wish to prevent you from dying,” replied Clousier.
“You cannot make the dead live,” she answered.
Monsieur Bonnet gave her a stern look which recalled her to herself.
“Let me take care of your health,” said Roubaud, in a gentle, persuasive
voice. “I am sure I can save to this region its living glory, and to all
our friends their common tie.”
Veronique bowed her head, and Gerard rowed slowly toward the island
in the middle of the lake, the largest of the three, into which the
overflowing water of the first was rippling with a sound that gave a
voice to that delightful landscape.
“You have done well to make me bid farewell to this ravishing nature on
such a day,” she said, looking at the beauty of the trees, all so full
of foliage that they hid the shore. The only disapprobation her
friends allowed themselves was to show a gloomy silence; and Veronique,
receiving another glance from Monsieur Bonnet, sprang lightly ashore,
assuming a lively air, which she did not relinquish. Once more the
hostess, she was charming, and the Grossetete family felt she was again
the beautiful Madame Graslin of former days.
“Indeed, you can still live, if you choose!” said her mother in a
whisper.
At this gay festival, amid these glorious creations produced by the
resources of nature only, nothing seemed likely to wound Veronique, and
yet it was here and now that she received her death-blow.
The party were to return about nine o’clock by way of the meadows, the
road through which, as lovely as an English or an Italian road, was the
pride of its engineer. The abundance of small stones, laid aside when
the plain was cleared, enabled him to keep it in good order; in fact,
for the last five years it was, in a way, macadamized. Carriages were
awaiting the company at the opening of the last valley toward the plain,
almost at the base of the Roche-Vive. The horses, raised at Montegnac,
were among the first that were ready for the market. The manager of
the stud had selected a dozen for the stables of the chateau, and their
present fine appearance was part of the programme of the fete. Madame
Graslin’s own carriage, a gift from Grossetete, was drawn by four of the
finest animals, plainly harnessed.
After dinner the happy party went to take coffee in a little wooden
kiosk, made like those on the Bosphorus, and placed on a point of the
island from which the eye could reach to the farther lake beyond.
From this spot Madame Graslin thought she saw her son Francis near the
nursery-ground formerly planted by Farrabesche. She looked again, but
did not see him; and Monsieur Ruffin pointed him out to her, playing on
the bank with Grossetete’s children. Veronique became alarmed lest he
should meet with some accident. Not listening to remonstrance, she ran
down from the kiosk, and jumping into a boat, began to row toward
her son. This little incident caused a general departure. Monsieur
Grossetete proposed that they should all follow her and walk on the
beautiful shore of the lake, along the curves of the mountainous bluffs.
On landing there Madame Graslin saw her son in the arms of a woman in
deep mourning. Judging by the shape of her bonnet and the style of her
clothes, the woman was a foreigner. Veronique was startled, and called
to her son, who presently came toward her.
“Who is that woman?” she asked the children round about her; “and why
did Francis leave you to go to her?”
“The lady called him by name,” said a little girl.
At that instant Madame Sauviat and Gerard, who had outstripped the rest
of the company, came up.
“Who is that woman, my dear child?” asked Madame Graslin as soon as
Francis reached her.
“I don’t know,” he answered; “but she kissed me as you and grandmamma
kissed me--she cried,” whispered Francis in his mother’s ear.
“Shall I go after her?” asked Gerard.
“No!” said Madame Graslin, with an abruptness that was not usual in her.
With a delicacy for which Veronique was grateful, Gerard led away the
children and went back to detain the rest of the party, leaving Madame
Sauviat, Madame Graslin, and Francis alone.
“What did she say to you?” asked Madame Sauviat of her grandson.
“I don’t know; she did not speak French.”
“Couldn’t you understand anything she said?” asked Veronique.
“No; but she kept saying over and over,--and that’s why I remember
it,--_My dear brother_!”
Veronique took her mother’s arm and led her son by the hand, but she had
scarcely gone a dozen steps before her strength gave way.
“What is the matter? what has happened?” said the others, who now came
up, to Madame Sauviat.
“Oh! my daughter is in danger!” said the old woman, in guttural tones.
It was necessary to carry Madame Graslin to her carriage. She signed to
Aline to get into it with Francis, and also Gerard.
“You have been in England,” she said to the latter as soon as she
recovered herself, “and therefore no doubt you speak English; tell me
the meaning of the words, _my dear brother_.”
On being told, Veronique exchanged a look with Aline and her mother
which made them shudder; but they restrained their feelings.
The shouts and joyous cries of those who were assisting in the departure
of the carriages, the splendor of the setting sun as it lay upon the
meadows, the perfect gait of the beautiful horses, the laughter of her
friends as they followed her on horseback at a gallop,--none of these
things roused Madame Graslin from her torpor. Her mother ordered the
coachman to hasten his horses, and their carriage reached the chateau
some time before the others. When the company were again assembled, they
were told that Veronique had gone to her rooms and was unable to see any
one.
“I fear,” said Gerard to his friends, “that Madame Graslin has had some
fatal shock.”
“Where? how?” they asked.
“To her heart,” he answered.
The following day Roubaud started for Paris. He had seen Madame Graslin,
and found her so seriously ill that he wished for the assistance and
advice of the ablest physician of the day. But Veronique had only
received Roubaud to put a stop to her mother and Aline’s entreaties that
she would do something to benefit her; she herself knew that death had
stricken her. She refused to see Monsieur Bonnet, sending word to him
that the time had not yet come. Though all her friends who had come from
Limoges to celebrate her birthday wished to be with her, she begged them
to excuse her from fulfilling the duties of hospitality, saying that she
desired to remain in the deepest solitude. After Roubaud’s departure the
other guests returned to Limoges, less disappointed than distressed; for
all those whom Grossetete had brought with him adored Veronique. They
were lost in conjecture as to what might have caused this mysterious
disaster.
One evening, two days after the departure of the company, Aline brought
Catherine to Madame Graslin’s apartment. La Farrabesche stopped short,
horrified at the change so suddenly wrought in her mistress, whose face
seemed to her almost distorted.
“Good God, madame!” she cried, “what harm that girl has done! If we had
only foreseen it, Farrabesche and I, we would never have taken her
in. She has just heard that madame is ill, and sends me to tell Madame
Sauviat she wants to speak to her.”
“Here!” cried Veronique. “Where is she?”
“My husband took her to the chalet.”
“Very good,” said Madame Graslin; “tell Farrabesche to go elsewhere.
Inform that lady that my mother will go to her; tell her to expect the
visit.”
As soon as it was dark Veronique, leaning on her mother’s arm, walked
slowly through the park to the chalet. The moon was shining with all its
brilliancy, the air was soft, and the two women, visibly affected, found
encouragement, of a sort, in the things of nature. The mother stopped
now and then, to rest her daughter, whose sufferings were poignant, so
that it was well-nigh midnight before they reached the path that goes
down from the woods to the sloping meadow where the silvery roof of the
chalet shone. The moonlight gave to the surface of the quiet water, the
tint of pearls. The little noises of the night, echoing in the silence,
made softest harmony. Veronique sat down on the bench of the chalet,
amid this beauteous scene of the starry night. The murmur of two voices
and the footfall of two persons still at a distance on the sandy
shore were brought by the water, which sometimes, when all is still,
reproduces sounds as faithfully as it reflects objects on the surface.
Veronique recognized at once the exquisite voice of the rector, and the
rustle of his cassock, also the movement of some silken stuff that was
probably the material of a woman’s gown.
“Let us go in,” she said to her mother.
Madame Sauviat and her daughter sat down on a crib in the lower room,
which was intended for a stable.
“My child,” they heard the rector saying, “I do not blame you,--you are
quite excusable; but your return may be the cause of irreparable evil;
she is the soul of this region.”
“Ah! monsieur, then I had better go away to-night,” replied the
stranger. “Though--I must tell you--to leave my country once more is
death to me. If I had stayed a day longer in that horrible New York,
where there is neither hope, nor faith, nor charity, I should have died
without being ill. The air I breathed oppressed my chest, food did not
nourish me, I was dying while full of life and vigor. My sufferings
ceased the moment I set foot upon the vessel to return. I seemed to
be already in France. Oh! monsieur, I saw my mother and one of my
sisters-in-law die of grief. My grandfather and grandmother Tascheron
are dead; dead, my dear Monsieur Bonnet, in spite of the prosperity of
Tascheronville,--for my father founded a village in Ohio and gave it
that name. That village is now almost a town, and a third of all the
land is cultivated by members of our family, whom God has constantly
protected. Our tillage succeeded, our crops have been enormous, and we
are rich. The town is Catholic, and we have managed to build a Catholic
church; we do not allow any other form of worship, and we hope to
convert by our example the many sects which surround us. True religion
is in a minority in that land of money and selfish interests, where the
soul is cold. Nevertheless, I will return to die there, sooner than
do harm or cause distress to the mother of our Francis. Only, Monsieur
Bonnet, take me to-night to the parsonage that I may pray upon _his_
tomb, the thought of which has brought me here; the nearer I have come
to where _he_ is, the more I felt myself another being. No, I never
expected to feel so happy again as I do here.”
“Well, then,” said the rector, “come with me now. If there should come
a time when you might return without doing injury, I will write to
you, Denise; but perhaps this visit to your birthplace will stop the
homesickness, and enable you to live over there without suffering--”
“Oh! to leave this country, now so beautiful! What wonders Madame
Graslin has done for it!” she exclaimed, pointing to the lake as it
lay in the moonlight. “All this fine domain will belong to our dear
Francis.”
“You shall not go away, Denise,” said Madame Graslin, who was standing
at the stable door.
Jean-Francois Tascheron’s sister clasped her hands on seeing the spectre
which addressed her. At that moment the pale Veronique, standing in
the moonlight, was like a shade defined upon the darkness of the open
door-way. Her eyes alone shone like stars.
“No, my child, you shall not leave the country you have come so far to
see again; you shall be happy here, or God will refuse to help me; it is
He, no doubt, who has brought you back.”
She took the astonished Denise by the hand, and led her away by a path
toward the other shore of the lake, leaving her mother and the rector,
who seated themselves on the bench.
“Let her do as she wishes,” said Madame Sauviat.
A few moments later Veronique returned alone, and was taken back to the
chateau by her mother and Monsieur Bonnet. Doubtless she had formed some
plan which required secrecy, for no one in the neighborhood either saw
Denise or heard any mention of her.
Madame Graslin took to her bed that day and never but once left it
again; she went from bad to worse daily, and seemed annoyed and thwarted
that she could not rise,--trying to do so on several occasions, and
expressing a desire to walk out into the park. A few days, however,
after the scene we have just related, about the beginning of June, she
made a violent effort, rose, dressed as if for a gala day, and begged
Gerard to give her his arm, declaring that she was resolved to take
a walk. She gathered up all her strength and expended it on this
expedition, accomplishing her intention in a paroxysm of will which had,
necessarily, a fatal reaction.
“Take me to the chalet, and alone,” she said to Gerard in a soft voice,
looking at him with a sort of coquetry. “This is my last excursion; I
dreamed last night the doctors arrived and captured me.”
“Do you want to see your woods?” asked Gerard.
“For the last time, yes,” she answered. “But what I really want,” she
added, in a coaxing voice, “is to make you a singular proposition.”
She asked Gerard to embark with her in one of the boats on the second
lake, to which she went on foot. When the young man, surprised at her
intention, began to move the oars, she pointed to the hermitage as the
object of her coming.
“My friend,” she said, after a long pause, during which she had been
contemplating the sky and water, the hills and shores, “I have a strange
request to make of you; but I think you are a man who would obey my
wishes--”
“In all things, sure that you can wish only what is good.”
“I wish to marry you,” she answered; “if you consent you will accomplish
the wish of a dying woman, which is certain to secure your happiness.”
“I am too ugly,” said the engineer.
“The person to whom I refer is pretty; she is young, and wishes to live
at Montegnac. If you will marry her you will help to soften my last
hours. I will not dwell upon her virtues now; I only say her nature is
a rare one; in the matter of grace and youth and beauty, one look will
suffice; you are now about to see her at the hermitage. As we return
home you must give me a serious yes or no.”
Hearing this confidence, Gerard unconsciously quickened his oars, which
made Madame Graslin smile. Denise, who was living alone, away from all
eyes, at the hermitage, recognized Madame Graslin and immediately opened
the door. Veronique and Gerard entered. The poor girl could not help a
blush as she met the eyes of the young man, who was greatly surprised at
her beauty.
“I hope Madame Farrabesche has not let you want for anything?” said
Veronique.
“Oh no! madame, see!” and she pointed to her breakfast.
“This is Monsieur Gerard, of whom I spoke to you,” went on Veronique.
“He is to be my son’s guardian, and after my death you shall live
together at the chateau until his majority.”
“Oh! madame, do not talk in that way!”
“My dear child, look at me!” replied Veronique, addressing Denise, in
whose eyes the tears rose instantly. “She has just arrived from New
York,” she added, by way of introduction to Gerard.
The engineer put several questions about the new world to the young
woman, while Veronique, leaving them alone, went to look at the third
and more distant lake of the Gabou. It was six o’clock as Veronique and
Gerard returned in the boat toward the chalet.
“Well?” she said, looking at him.
“You have my promise.”
“Though you are, I know, without prejudices,” she went on, “I must not
leave you ignorant of the reason why that poor girl, brought back here
by homesickness, left the place originally.”
“A false step?”
“Oh, no!” said Veronique. “Should I offer her to you if that were so?
She is the sister of a workman who died on the scaffold--”
“Ah! Tascheron,” he said, “the murderer of old Pingret.”
“Yes, she is the sister of a murderer,” said Madame Graslin, in a bitter
tone; “you are at liberty to take back your promise and--”
She did not finish, and Gerard was obliged to carry her to the bench
before the chalet, where she remained unconscious for some little time.
When she opened her eyes Gerard was on his knees before her and he said
instantly:--
“I will marry Denise.”
Madame Graslin took his head in both hands and kissed him on the
forehead; then, seeing his surprise at so much gratitude, she pressed
his hand and said:
“Before long you will know the secret of all this. Let us go back to
the terrace, for it is late; I am very tired, but I must look my last on
that dear plain.”
Though the day had been insupportably hot, the storms which during
this year devastated parts of Europe and of France but respected the
Limousin, had run their course in the basin of the Loire, and the
atmosphere was singularly clear. The sky was so pure that the eye could
seize the slightest details on the horizon. What language can render the
delightful concert of busy sounds produced in the village by the return
of the workers from the fields? Such a scene, to be rightly given, needs
a great landscape artist and also a great painter of the human face.
Is there not, by the bye, in the lassitude of Nature and that of man a
curious affinity which is difficult to grasp? The depressing heat of a
dog-day and the rarification of the air give to the least sound made by
human beings all its signification. The women seated on their doorsteps
and waiting for their husbands (who often bring back the children)
gossip with each other while still at work. The roofs are casting up
the lines of smoke which tell of the evening meal, the gayest among the
peasantry; after which, they sleep. All actions express the tranquil
cheerful thoughts of those whose day’s work is over. Songs are heard
very different in character from those of the morning; in this the
peasants imitate the birds, whose warbling at night is totally unlike
their notes at dawn. All nature sings a hymn to rest, as it sang a hymn
of joy to the coming sun. The slightest movements of living beings seem
tinted then with the soft, harmonious colors of the sunset cast upon the
landscape and lending even to the dusty roadways a placid air. If any
dared deny the influence of this hour, the loveliest of the day, the
flowers would protest and intoxicate his senses with their penetrating
perfumes, which then exhale and mingle with the tender hum of insects
and the amorous note of birds.
The brooks which threaded the plain beyond the village were veiled
in fleecy vapor. In the great meadows through which the high-road
ran,--bordered with poplars, acacias, and ailanthus, wisely intermingled
and already giving shade,--enormous and justly celebrated herds of
cattle were scattered here and there, some still grazing, others
ruminating. Men, women, and children were ending their day’s work in the
hay-field, the most picturesque of all the country toils. The night air,
freshened by distant storms, brought on its wings the satisfying odors
of the newly cut grass or the finished hay. Every feature of this
beautiful panorama could be seen perfectly; those who feared a coming
storm were finishing in haste the hay-stacks, while others followed with
their pitchforks to fill the carts as they were driven along the rows.
Others in the distance were still mowing, or turning the long lines of
fallen grass to dry it, or hastening to pile it into cocks. The joyous
laugh of the merry workers mingling with the shouts of the children
tumbling each other in the hay, rose on the air. The eye could
distinguish the pink, red, or blue petticoats, the kerchiefs, and the
bare legs and arms of the women, all wearing broad-brimmed hats of a
coarse straw, and the shirts and trousers of the men, the latter almost
invariably white. The last rays of the sun were filtering through the
long lines of poplars planted beside the trenches which divided the
plain into meadows of unequal size, and caressing the groups of horses
and carts, men, women, children, and cattle. The cattlemen and the
shepherd-girls were beginning to collect their flocks to the sound of
rustic horns.
The scene was noisy, yet silent,--a paradoxical statement, which will
surprise only those to whom the character of country life is still
unknown. From all sides came the carts, laden with fragrant fodder.
There was something, I know not what, of torpor in the scene. Veronique
walked slowly and silently between Gerard and the rector, who had joined
her on the terrace.
Through the openings made by the rural lanes running down below the
terrace to the main street of Montegnac Gerard and Monsieur Bonnet could
see the faces of men, women, and children turned toward them; watching
more particularly, no doubt, for Madame Graslin. How much of tenderness
and gratitude was expressed on those faces! How many benedictions
followed Veronique’s footsteps! With what reverent attention were the
three benefactors of a whole community regarded! Man was adding a hymn
of gratitude to the other chants of evening.
While Madame Graslin walked on with her eyes fastened on the long,
magnificent green pastures, her most cherished creation, the priest
and the mayor did not take their eyes from the groups below, whose
expression it was impossible to misinterpret; pain, sadness, and regret,
mingled with hope, were plainly on all those faces. No one in Montegnac
or its neighborhood was ignorant that Monsieur Roubaud had gone to Paris
to bring the best physician science afforded, or that the benefactress
of the whole district was in the last stages of a fatal illness. In all
the markets through a circumference of thirty miles the peasants asked
those of Montegnac,--
“How is your good woman now?”
The great vision of death hovered over the land, and dominated that
rural picture. Afar, in the fields, more than one reaper sharpening his
scythe, more than one young girl, her arms resting on her fork, more
than one farmer stacking his hay, seeing Madame Graslin, stood mute and
thoughtful, examining that noble woman, the blessing of the Correze,
seeking some favorable sign or merely looking to admire her, impelled by
a feeling that arrested their work.
“She is out walking; therefore she must be better.”
These simple words were on every lip.
Madame Graslin’s mother, seated on the iron bench which Veronique had
formerly placed at the end of the terrace, studied every movement of her
daughter; she watched her step in walking, and a few tears rolled from
her eyes. Aware of the secret efforts of that superhuman courage, she
knew that Veronique at that moment was suffering the tortures of a
horrible agony, and only maintained herself erect by the exercise of her
heroic will. The tears--they seemed almost red--which forced their way
from those aged eyes, and furrowed that wrinkled face, the parchment of
which seemed incapable of softening under any emotion, excited those of
young Graslin, whom Monsieur Ruffin had between his knees.
“What is the matter, my boy?” said the tutor, anxiously.
“My grandmother is crying,” he answered.
Monsieur Ruffin, whose eyes were on Madame Graslin as she came toward
them, now looked at Madame Sauviat, and was powerfully struck by the
aspect of that old head, like that of a Roman matron, petrified with
grief and moistened with tears.
“Madame, why did you not prevent her from coming out?” said the tutor to
the old mother, august and sacred in her silent grief.
As Veronique advanced majestically with her naturally fine and graceful
step, Madame Sauviat, driven by despair at the thought of surviving her
daughter, allowed the secret of many things that awakened curiosity to
escape her.
“How can she walk like that,” she cried, “wearing a horrible horsehair
shirt, which pricks into her skin perpetually?”
The words horrified the young man, who was not insensible to the
exquisite grace of Veronique’s movements; he shuddered as he thought of
the constant and terrific struggle of the soul to maintain its empire
thus over the body.
“She has worn it thirteen years,--ever since she ceased to nurse the
boy,” said the old woman. “She has done miracles here, but if her whole
life were known they ought to canonize her. Since she came to Montegnac
no one has ever seen her eat, and do you know why? Aline serves her
three times a day a piece of dry bread, and vegetables boiled in water,
without salt, on a common plate of red earth like those they feed the
dogs on. Yes, that’s how the woman lives who has given new life to
this whole canton. She kneels to say her prayers on the edge of that
hair-shirt. She says she could not have that smiling air you know she
always has unless she practised these austerities. I tell you this,”
added the old woman, sinking her voice, “so that you may repeat it
to the doctor that Monsieur Roubaud has gone to fetch. If they could
prevent my daughter from continuing these penances, perhaps they might
still save her, though death has laid its hand upon her head. See for
yourself! Ah! I must be strong indeed to have borne so many things these
fifteen years.”
The old woman took her grandson’s hand and passed it over her forehead
and cheeks as if the child’s touch shed a healing balm there; then she
kissed it with an affection the secret of which belongs to grandmothers
as much as it belongs to mothers.
Veronique was now only a few feet from the bench, in company with
Clousier, the rector, and Gerard. Illuminated by the glow of the setting
sun, she shone with a dreadful beauty. Her yellow forehead, furrowed
with long wrinkles massed one above the other like layers of clouds,
revealed a fixed thought in the midst of inward troubles. Her face,
devoid of all color, entirely white with the dead, greenish whiteness of
plants without light, was thin, though not withered, and bore the signs
of terrible physical sufferings produced by mental anguish. She
fought her soul with her body, and _vice versa_. She was so completely
destroyed that she no more resembled herself than an old woman resembles
her portrait as a girl. The ardent expression of her eyes declared the
despotic empire exercised by a devout will over a body reduced to what
religion requires it to be. In this woman the soul dragged the flesh
as the Achilles of profane story dragged Hector; for fifteen years
she dragged it victoriously along the stony paths of life around the
celestial Jerusalem she hoped to enter, not by a vile deception, but
with acclamation. No solitary that ever lived in the dry and arid
deserts of Africa was ever more master of his senses than was Veronique
in her magnificent chateau, among the soft, voluptuous scenery of that
opulent land, beneath the protecting mantle of that rich forest, whence
science, the heir of Moses’ wand, had called forth plenty, prosperity,
and happiness for a whole region. She contemplated the results of
twelve years’ patience, a work which might have made the fame of many a
superior man, with a gentle modesty such as Pontorno has painted in
the sublime face of his “Christian Chastity caressing the Celestial
Unicorn.” The mistress of the manor, whose silence was respected by
her companions when they saw that her eyes were roving over those vast
plains, once arid, and now fertile by her will, walked on, her arms
folded, with a distant look, as if to some far horizon, on her face.