Suddenly she stopped, a few feet from her mother, who looked at her as
the mother of Christ must have looked at her son upon the cross. She
raised her hand, and pointing to the spot where the road to Montegnac
branched from the highway, she said, smiling:--
“See that carriage with the post-horses; Monsieur Roubaud is returning
to us. We shall now know how many hours I have to live.”
“Hours?” said Gerard.
“Did I not tell you I was taking my last walk?” she replied. “I have
come here to see for the last time this glorious scene in all its
splendor!” She pointed first to the village where the whole population
seemed to be collected in the church square, and then to the beautiful
meadows glowing in the last rays of the setting sun. “Ah!” she said,
“let me see the benediction of God in the strange atmospheric condition
to which we owe the safety of our harvest. Around us, on all sides,
tempests, hail, lightning, have struck incessantly and pitilessly. The
common people think thus, why not I? I do so need to see in this a happy
augury for what awaits me after death!”
The child stood up and took his mother’s hand and laid it on his head.
Veronique, deeply affected by the action, so full of eloquence, took
up her son with supernatural strength, seating him on her left arm as
though he were still an infant at her breast, saying, as she kissed
him:--
“Do you see that land, my son? When you are a man, continue there your
mother’s work.”
“Madame,” said the rector, in a grave voice, “a few strong and
privileged beings are able to contemplate their coming death face to
face, to fight, as it were, a duel with it, and to display a courage
and an ability which challenge admiration. You show us this terrible
spectacle; but perhaps you have too little pity for us; leave us at
least the hope that you may be mistaken, and that God will allow you to
finish that which you have begun.”
“All I have done is through you, my friends,” she said. “I have been
useful, I can be so no longer. All is fruitful around us now; nothing
is barren and desolated here except my heart. You well know, my dear
rector, that I can only find peace and pardon _there_.”
She stretched her hand toward the cemetery. Never had she said as much
since the day of her arrival, when she was taken with sudden illness at
the same spot. The rector looked attentively at his penitent, and the
habit of penetration he had long acquired made him see that in those
simple words he had won another triumph. Veronique must have made a
mighty effort over herself to break her twelve years’ silence with a
speech that said so much. The rector clasped his hands with a fervent
gesture that was natural to him as he looked with deep emotion at the
members of this family whose secrets had passed into his heart.
Gerard, to whom the words “peace and pardon” must have seemed strange,
was bewildered. Monsieur Ruffin, with his eyes fixed on Veronique, was
stupefied. At this instant the carriage came rapidly up the avenue.
“There are five of them!” cried the rector, who could see and count the
travellers.
“Five!” exclaimed Gerard. “Can five know more than two?”
“Ah,” cried Madame Graslin suddenly, grasping the rector’s arm, “the
_procureur-general_ is among them! What is he doing here?”
“And papa Grossetete, too!” cried Francis.
“Madame,” said the rector, supporting Veronique, and leading her apart a
few steps, “show courage; be worthy of yourself.”
“But what can he want?” she replied, leaning on the balustrade.
“Mother!” (the old woman ran to her daughter with an activity that
belied her years.) “I shall see him again,” she said.
“As he comes with Monsieur Grossetete,” said the rector, “he can have
none but good intentions.”
“Ah! monsieur, my child will die!” cried Madame Sauviat, seeing the
effect of the rector’s words on her daughter’s face. “How can her heart
survive such emotions? Monsieur Grossetete has always hitherto prevented
that man from seeing Veronique.”
Madame Graslin’s face was on fire.
“Do you hate him so much?” said the Abbe Bonnet.
“She left Limoges to escape the sight of him, and to escape letting
the whole town into her secrets,” said Madame Sauviat, terrified at the
change she saw on Madame Graslin’s features.
“Do you not see that he will poison my few remaining hours? When I ought
to be thinking of heaven he will nail me to earth,” cried Veronique.
The rector took her arm and constrained her to walk aside with him. When
they were alone he stopped and gave her one of those angelic looks with
which he was able to calm the violent convulsions of the soul.
“If it is really so,” he said, “as your confessor, I order you to
receive him, to be kind and affectionate to him, to quit that garment of
wrath, and forgive him as God will forgive you. Can there still be the
remains of passion of a soul I believed to be purified. Burn this last
incense on the altar of your penitence, or else your repentance is a
lie.”
“There was still that effort to make--and it is made,” she answered,
wiping her eyes. “The devil lurked in that last fold of my heart, and
God, no doubt, put into Monsieur de Grandville’s mind the thought that
brings him here. Ah! how many times must God strike me?” she cried.
She stopped, as if to say a mental prayer; then she returned to Madame
Sauviat and said in a low voice:
“My dear mother, be kind and gentle to Monsieur de Grandville.”
The old woman clasped her hands with a feverish shudder.
“There is no longer any hope,” she said, seizing the rector’s hand.
The carriage, announced by the postilion’s whip, was now coming up the
last slope; the gates were opened, it entered the courtyard, and the
travellers came at once to the terrace. They were the illustrious
Archbishop Dutheil, who was on his way to consecrate Monseigneur Gabriel
de Rastignac, the _procureur-general_, Monsieur de Grandville, Monsieur
Grossetete, Monsieur Roubaud, and one of the most celebrated physicians
in Paris, Horace Bianchon.
“You are very welcome,” said Veronique, advancing toward them,--“you
particularly,” she added, offering her hand to Monsieur de Grandville,
who took it and pressed it.
“I counted on the intervention of Monseigneur and on that of my friend
Monsieur Grossetete to obtain for me a favorable reception,” said the
_procureur-general_. “It would have been a life-long regret to me if I
did not see you again.”
“I thank those who brought you here,” replied Veronique, looking at the
Comte de Grandville for the first time in fifteen years. “I have felt
averse to you for a very long time, but I now recognize the injustice of
my feelings; and you shall know why, if you can stay till the day after
to-morrow at Montegnac.” Then turning to Horace Bianchon and bowing to
him, she added: “Monsieur will no doubt confirm my apprehensions. God
must have sent you, Monseigneur,” she said, turning to the archbishop.
“In memory of our old friendship you will not refuse to assist me in my
last moments. By whose mercy is it that I have about me all the beings
who have loved and supported me in life?”
As she said the word _loved_ she turned with a gracious look to Monsieur
de Grandville, who was touched to tears by this mark of feeling. Silence
fell for a few moments on every one. The doctors wondered by what occult
power this woman could still keep her feet, suffering as she must have
suffered. The other three men were so shocked at the ravages disease had
suddenly made in her that they communicated their thoughts by their eyes
only.
“Allow me,” she said, with her accustomed grace, “to leave you now with
these gentlemen; the matter is urgent.”
She bowed to her guests, gave an arm to each of the doctors, and walked
toward the chateau feebly and slowly, with a difficulty which told only
too plainly of the coming catastrophe.
“Monsieur Bonnet,” said the archbishop, looking at the rector, “you have
accomplished a miracle.”
“Not I, but God, Monseigneur,” he replied.
“They said she was dying,” said Monsieur Grossetete, “but she is dead;
there is nothing left of her but spirit.”
“A soul,” said Gerard.
“And yet she is still the same,” cried the _procureur-general_.
“A stoic after the manner of the Porch philosophers,” said the tutor.
They walked in silence the whole length of the balustrade, looking at
the landscape still red with the declining light.
“To me who saw this scene thirteen years ago,” said the archbishop,
pointing to the fertile plain, the valley, and the mountains of
Montegnac, “this miracle is as extraordinary as that we have just
witnessed. But how comes it that you allow Madame Graslin to walk about?
She ought to be in her bed.”
“She was there,” said Madame Sauviat; “for ten days she did not leave
it; but to-day she insisted on getting up to take a last look at the
landscape.”
“I can understand that she wanted to bid farewell to her great
creation,” said Monsieur de Grandville; “but she risked expiring on this
terrace.”
“Monsieur Roubaud told us not to thwart her,” said Madame Sauviat.
“What a stupendous work! what a miracle has been accomplished!” said the
archbishop, whose eyes were roving over the scene before him. “She has
literally sown the desert! But we know, monsieur,” he added, turning
to Gerard, “that your scientific knowledge and your labors have a large
share in it.”
“They have been only the workmen,” replied the mayor. “Yes, the hands
only; she has been the thought.”
Madame Sauviat here left the group, to hear, if possible, the decision
of the doctors.
“We need some heroism ourselves,” said Monsieur de Grandville to the
rector and the archbishop, “to enable us to witness this death.”
“Yes,” said Monsieur Grossetete, who overheard him, “but we ought to do
much for such a friend.”
After several turns up and down the terrace, these persons, full of
solemn thoughts, saw two farmers approaching them, sent as a deputation
from the village, where the inhabitants were in a state of painful
anxiety to know the sentence pronounced by the physician from Paris.
“They are still consulting, and as yet we know nothing, my friends,”
said the archbishop.
As he spoke, Monsieur Roubaud appeared coming toward them, and they all
hurried to meet him.
“Well?” said the mayor.
“She cannot live forty-eight hours longer,” replied Monsieur Roubaud.
“During my absence the disease has fully developed; Monsieur Bianchon
does not understand how it was possible for her to have walked. Such
phenomenal exhibitions of strength are always caused by great mental
exaltation. So, gentlemen,” said the doctor to the priests, “she belongs
to you now; science is useless, and my illustrious fellow-physician
thinks you have barely time enough for your last offices.”
“Let us go now and say the prayers for the forty hours,” said the rector
to his parishioners, turning to leave the terrace. “His Grace will
doubtless administer the last sacraments.”
The archbishop bowed his head; he could not speak; his eyes were full of
tears. Every one sat down, or leaned against the balustrade, absorbed in
his own thought. The church bells presently sent forth a few sad calls,
and then the whole population were seen hurrying toward the porch. The
gleam of the lighted tapers shone through the trees in Monsieur Bonnet’s
garden; the chants resounded. No color was left in the landscape but
the dull red hue of the dusk; even the birds had hushed their songs; the
tree-frog alone sent forth its long, clear, melancholy note.
“I will go and do my duty,” said the archbishop, turning away with a
slow step like a man overcome with emotion.
The consultation had taken place in the great salon of the chateau. This
vast room communicated with a state bedchamber, furnished in red damask,
in which Graslin had displayed a certain opulent magnificence. Veronique
had not entered it six times in fourteen years; the grand apartments
were quite useless to her, and she never received her friends there. But
now the effort she had made to accomplish her last obligation, and to
overcome her last repugnance had exhausted her strength, and she was
wholly unable to mount the stairs to her own rooms.
When the illustrious physician had taken the patient’s hand and felt her
pulse he looked at Monsieur Roubaud and made him a sign; then together
they lifted her and carried her into the chamber. Aline hastily opened
the doors. Like all state beds the one in this room had no sheets, and
the two doctors laid Madame Graslin on the damask coverlet. Roubaud
opened the windows, pushed back the outer blinds, and called. The
servants and Madame Sauviat went in. The tapers in the candelabra were
lighted.
“It is ordained,” said the dying woman, smiling, “that my death shall be
what that of a Christian should be--a festival!”