At ten o’clock in the morning the archbishop, wearing his pontifical
robes, came into Madame Graslin’s chamber. The prelate, as well as the
rector, had such confidence in this woman that they gave her no advice
or instructions as to the limits within which she ought to make her
confession.
Veronique now saw an assemblage of clergy from all the neighboring
districts. Monseigneur was assisted by four vicars. The magnificent
vessels she had bestowed upon her dear parish church were brought to the
house and gave splendor to the ceremony. Eight choristers in their white
and red surplices stood in two rows from the bed to the door of the
salon, each holding one of the large bronze-gilt candelabra which
Veronique had ordered from Paris. The cross and the church banner were
held on either side of the bed by white-haired sacristans. Thanks to the
devotion of her servants, a wooden altar brought from the sacristy
had been erected close to the door of the salon, and so prepared and
decorated that Monseigneur could say mass upon it.
Madame Graslin was deeply touched by these attentions, which the Church,
as a general thing, grants only to royal personages. The folding doors
between the salon and the dining-room were open, and she could see a
vista of the ground-floor rooms filled with the village population. Her
friends had thought of everything; the salon was occupied exclusively
by themselves and the servants of the household. In the front rank and
grouped before the door of the bedroom were her nearest friends,
those on whose discretion reliance could be placed. MM. Grossetete, de
Grandville, Roubaud, Gerard, Clousier, Ruffin, took the first places.
They had arranged among themselves that they should rise and stand in a
group, thus preventing the words of the repentant woman from being heard
in the farther rooms; but their tears and sobs would, in any case, have
drowned her voice.
At this moment and before all else in that audience, two persons
presented, to an observer, a powerfully affecting sight. One was
Denise Tascheron. Her foreign garments, of Quaker simplicity, made her
unrecognizable by her former village acquaintance. The other was
quite another personage, an acquaintance not to be forgotten, and
his apparition there was like a streak of lurid light. The
_procureur-general_ came suddenly to a perception of the truth; the
part that he had played to Madame Graslin unrolled itself before him;
he divined it to its fullest extent. Less influenced, as a son of the
nineteenth century, by the religious aspect of the matter, Monsieur de
Grandville’s heart was filled with an awful dread; for he saw before
him, he contemplated the drama of that woman’s hidden self at the hotel
Graslin during the trial of Jean-Francois Tascheron. That tragic period
came back distinctly to his memory,--lighted even now by the mother’s
eyes, shining with hatred, which fell upon him where he stood, like
drops of molten lead. That old woman, standing ten feet from him,
forgave nothing. That man, representing human justice, trembled. Pale,
struck to the heart, he dared not cast his eyes upon the bed where lay
the woman he had loved so well, now livid beneath the hand of death,
gathering strength to conquer agony from the greatness of her sin and
its repentance. The mere sight of Veronique’s thin profile, sharply
defined in white upon the crimson damask, caused him a vertigo.
At eleven o’clock the mass began. After the epistle had been read by the
rector of Vizay the archbishop removed his dalmatic and advanced to the
threshold of the bedroom door.
“Christians, gather here to assist in the ceremony of extreme unction
which we are about to administer to the mistress of this house,” he
said, “you who join your prayers to those of the Church and intercede
with God to obtain from Him her eternal salvation, you are now to
learn that she does not feel herself worthy, in this, her last hour, to
receive the holy viaticum without having made, for the edification of
her fellows, a public confession of the greatest of her sins. We have
resisted her pious wish, although this act of contrition was long in use
during the early ages of Christianity. But, as this poor woman tells us
that her confession may serve to rehabilitate an unfortunate son of this
parish, we leave her free to follow the inspirations of her repentance.”
After these words, said with pastoral unction and dignity, the
archbishop turned aside to give place to Veronique. The dying woman came
forward, supported by her old mother and the rector,--the mother from
whom she derived her body, the Church, the spiritual mother of her soul.
She knelt down on a cushion, clasped her hands, and seemed to collect
herself for a few moments, as if to gather from some source descending
from heaven the power to speak. At this moment the silence was almost
terrifying. None dared look at their neighbor. All eyes were lowered.
And yet the eyes of Veronique, when she raised them, encountered those
of the _procureur-general_, and the expression on that blanched face
brought the color to hers.
“I could not die in peace,” said Veronique, in a voice of deep emotion,
“if I suffered the false impression you all have of me to remain. You
see in me a guilty woman, who asks your prayers, and who seeks to make
herself worthy of pardon by this public confession of her sin. That sin
was so great, its consequences were so fatal, that perhaps no penance
can atone for it. But the more humiliation I submit to here on earth,
the less I may have to dread the wrath of God in the heavenly kingdom to
which I am going. My father, who had great confidence in me, commended
to my care (now twenty years ago) a son of this parish, in whom he had
seen a great desire to improve himself, an aptitude for study, and fine
characteristics. I mean the unfortunate Jean-Francois Tascheron, who
thenceforth attached himself to me as his benefactress. How did the
affection I felt for him become a guilty one? I think myself excused
from explaining this. Perhaps it could be shown that the purest
sentiments by which we act in this world were insensibly diverted from
their course by untold sacrifices, by reasons arising from our human
frailty, by many causes which might appear to dismiss the evil of my
sin. But even if the noblest affections moved me, was I less guilty?
Rather let me confess that I, who by education, by position in the
world, might consider myself superior to the youth my father confided to
me, and from whom I was separated by the natural delicacy of our sex,--I
listened, fatally, to the promptings of the devil. I soon found myself
too much the mother of that young man to be insensible to his mute and
delicate admiration. He alone, he first, recognized my true value. But
perhaps a horrible calculation entered my mind. I thought how discreet a
youth would be who owed his all to me, and whom the chances of life
had put so far away from me, though we were born equals. I made even my
reputation for benevolence, my pious occupations, a cloak to screen my
conduct. Alas!--and this is doubtless one of my greatest sins--I hid my
passion under cover of the altar. The most virtuous of my actions--the
love I bore my mother, the acts of devotion which were sincere and true
in the midst of my wrong-doing--all, all were made to serve the ends of
a desperate passion, and were links in the chain that held me. My poor
beloved mother, who hears me now, was for a long time, ignorantly, an
accomplice in my sin. When her eyes were opened, too many dangerous
facts existed not to give her mother’s heart the strength to be silent.
Silence with her has been the highest virtue. Her love for her daughter
has gone beyond her love to God. Ah! I here discharge her solemnly from
the heavy burden of secrecy which she has borne. She shall end her days
without compelling either eyes or brow to lie. Let her motherhood stand
clear of blame; let that noble, sacred old age, crowned with virtue,
shine with its natural lustre, freed of that link which bound her
indirectly to infamy!”
Tears checked the dying woman’s voice for an instant; Aline gave her
salts to inhale.
“There is no one who has not been better to me than I deserve,” she
went on,--“even the devoted servant who does this last service; she has
feigned ignorance of what she knew, but at least she was in the secret
of the penances by which I have destroyed the flesh that sinned. I here
beg pardon of the world for the long deception to which I have been led
by the terrible logic of society. Jean-Francois Tascheron was not as
guilty as he seemed. Ah! you who hear me, I implore you to remember his
youth, and the madness excited in him partly by the remorse that seized
upon me, partly by involuntary seductions. More than that! it was a
sense of honor, though a mistaken honor, which caused the most awful
of these evils. Neither of us could endure our perpetual deceit. He
appealed, unhappy man, to my own right feeling; he sought to make our
fatal love as little wounding to others as it could be. We meant to hide
ourselves away forever. Thus I was the cause, the sole cause, of his
crime. Driven by necessity, the unhappy man, guilty of too much devotion
to an idol, chose from all evil acts the one which might be hereafter
reparable. I knew nothing of it till the moment of execution. At
that moment the hand of God threw down that scaffolding of false
contrivances--I heard the cries; they echo in my ears! I divined the
struggle, which I could not stop,--I, the cause of it! Tascheron was
maddened; I swear it.”
Here Veronique turned her eyes upon Monsieur de Grandville, and a sob
was heard to issue from Denise Tascheron’s breast.
“He lost his mind when he saw what he thought his happiness destroyed
by unforeseen circumstances. The unhappy man, misled by his love,
went headlong from a delinquent act to crime--from robbery to a double
murder. He left my mother’s house an innocent man, he returned a guilty
one. I alone knew that there was neither premeditation nor any of the
aggravating circumstances on which he was sentenced to death. A hundred
times I thought of betraying myself to save him; a hundred times
a horrible and necessary restraint stopped the words upon my lips.
Undoubtedly, my presence near the scene had contributed to give him the
odious, infamous, ignoble courage of a murderer. Were it not for me,
he would have fled. I had formed that soul, trained that mind, enlarged
that heart; I knew it; he was incapable of cowardice or meanness. Do
justice to that involuntarily guilty arm, do justice to him, whom God,
in his mercy, has allowed to sleep in his quiet grave, where you have
wept for him, suspecting, it may be, the extenuating truth. Punish,
curse the guilty creature before you! Horrified by the crime when
once committed, I did my best to hide my share in it. Trusted by my
father--I, who was childless--to lead a child to God, I led him to the
scaffold! Ah! punish me, curse me, the hour has come!”
Saying these words, her eyes shone with the stoic pride of a savage.
The archbishop, standing behind her, and as if protecting her with the
pastoral cross, abandoned his impassible demeanor and covered his eyes
with his right hand. A muffled cry was heard, as though some one were
dying. Two persons, Gerard and Roubaud, received and carried away in
their arms, Denise Tascheron, unconscious. That sight seemed for an
instant to quench the fire in Veronique’s eyes; she was evidently
uneasy; but soon her self-control and serenity of martyrdom resumed
their sway.
“You now know,” she continued, “that I deserve neither praise or
blessing for my conduct here. I have led in sight of Heaven, a secret
life of bitter penance which Heaven will estimate. My life before men
has been an immense reparation for the evils I have caused; I have
marked my repentance ineffaceably on the earth; it will last almost
eternally here below. It is written on those fertile fields, in the
prosperous village, in the rivulets brought from the mountains to water
the plain once barren and fruitless, now green and fertile. Not a tree
will be cut for a hundred years to come but the people of this region
will know of the remorse that made it grow. My repentant soul will still
live here among you. What you will owe to its efforts, to a fortune
honorably acquired, is the heritage of its repentance,--the repentance
of her who caused the crime. All has been repaired so far as society
is concerned; but I am still responsible for that life, crushed in its
bud,--a life confided to me and for which I am now required to render an
account.”
The flame of her eyes was veiled in tears.
“There is here, before me, a man,” she continued, “who, because he did
his duty strictly, has been to me an object of hatred which I thought
eternal. He was the first inflictor of my punishment. My feet were still
too deep in blood, I was too near the deed, not to hate justice. So
long as that root of anger lay in my heart, I knew there was still a
lingering remnant of condemnable passion. I had nothing to forgive
that man, I have only had to purify that corner of my heart where Evil
lurked. However hard it may have been to win that victory, it is won.”
Monsieur de Grandville turned a face to Veronique that was bathed in
tears. Human justice seemed at that moment to feel remorse. When
the confessing woman raised her head as if to continue, she met the
agonizing look of old man Grossetete, who stretched his supplicating
hands to her as if to say, “Enough, enough!” At the same instant a sound
of tears and sobs was heard. Moved by such sympathy, unable to bear the
balm of this general pardon, she was seized with faintness. Seeing that
her daughter’s vital force was gone at last, the old mother summoned the
vigor of her youth to carry her away.
“Christians,” said the archbishop, “you have heard the confession of
that penitent woman; it confirms the sentence of human justice. You
ought to see in this fresh reason to join your prayers to those of the
Church which offers to God the holy sacrifice of the mass, to implore
his mercy in favor of so deep a repentance.”
The services went on. Veronique, lying on the bed, followed them with a
look of such inward contentment that she seemed, to every eye, no longer
the same woman. On her face was the candid and virtuous expression of
the pure young girl such as she had been in her parents’ home. The dawn
of eternal life was already whitening her brow and glorifying her face
with its celestial tints. Doubtless she heard the mystic harmonies, and
gathered strength to live from her desire to unite herself once more
with God in the last communion. The rector came beside the bed and
gave her absolution. The archbishop administered the sacred oils with a
fatherly tenderness that showed to all there present how dear the lost
but now recovered lamb had been to him. Then, with the sacred anointing,
he closed to the things of earth those eyes which had done such evil,
and laid the seal of the Church upon the lips that were once too
eloquent. The ears, by which so many evil inspirations had penetrated
her mind, were closed forever. All the senses, deadened by repentance,
were thus sanctified, and the spirit of evil could have no further power
within her soul.
Never did assistants of this ceremony more fully understand the grandeur
and profundity of the sacrament than those who now saw the acts of the
Church justly following the confession of that dying woman.
Thus prepared, Veronique received the body of Jesus Christ with an
expression of hope and joy which melted the ice of unbelief against
which the rector had so often bruised himself. Roubaud, confounded in
all his opinions, became a Catholic on the spot. The scene was touching
and yet awesome; the solemnity of its every feature was so great that
painters might have found there the subject of a masterpiece.
When this funeral part was over, and the dying woman heard the priests
begin the reading of the gospel of Saint John, she signed to her mother
to bring her son, who had been taken from the room by his tutor. When
she saw Francis kneeling by the bedside the pardoned mother felt she
had the right to lay her hand upon his head and bless him. Doing so, she
died.
Old Madame Sauviat was there, at her post, erect as she had been
for twenty years. This woman, heroic after her fashion, closed her
daughter’s eyes--those eyes that had wept so much--and kissed them.
All the priests, followed by the choristers, surrounded the bed. By the
flaming light of the torches they chanted the terrible _De Profundis_,
the echoes of which told the population kneeling before the chateau, the
friends praying in the salon, the servants in the adjoining rooms, that
the mother of the canton was dead. The hymn was accompanied with moans
and tears. The confession of that grand woman had not been audible
beyond the threshold of the salon, and none but loving ears had heard
it.
When the peasants of the neighborhood, joining with those of Montegnac,
came, one by one, to lay upon their benefactress the customary palm,
together with their last farewell mingled with prayers and tears, they
saw the man of justice, crushed by grief, holding the hand of the woman
whom, without intending it, he had so cruelly but so justly stricken.
Two days later the _procureur-general_, Grossetete, the archbishop, and
the mayor, holding the corners of the black pall, conducted the body of
Madame Graslin to its last resting-place. It was laid in the grave in
deep silence; not a word was said; no one had strength to speak; all
eyes were full of tears. “She is now a saint!” was said by the peasants
as they went away along the roads of the canton to which she had given
prosperity,--saying the words to her creations as though they were
animate beings.
No one thought it strange that Madame Graslin was buried beside the body
of Jean-Francois Tascheron. She had not asked it; but the old mother,
as the last act of her tender pity, had requested the sexton to make the
grave there,--putting together those whom earth had so violently parted,
and whose souls were now reunited through repentance in purgatory.
Madame Graslin’s will was found to be all that was expected of it.
She founded scholarships and hospital beds at Limoges solely for
working-men; she assigned a considerable sum--three hundred thousand
francs in six years--for the purchase of that part of the village called
Les Tascherons, where she directed that a hospital should be built. This
hospital, intended for the indigent old persons of the canton, for
the sick, for lying-in women if paupers, and for foundlings, was to
be called the Tascheron Hospital. Veronique ordered it to be placed in
charge of the Gray Sisters, and fixed the salaries of the surgeon and
the physician at four thousand francs for each. She requested Roubaud to
be the first physician of this hospital, placing upon him the choice
of the surgeon, and requesting him to superintend the erection of
the building with reference to sanitary arrangements, conjointly with
Gerard, who was to be the architect. She also gave to the village of
Montegnac an extent of pasture land sufficient to pay all its taxes.
The church, she endowed with a fund to be used for a special purpose,
namely: watch was to be kept over young workmen, and cases discovered in
which some village youth might show a disposition for art, or science,
or manufactures; the interest of the fund was then to be used in
fostering it. The intelligent benevolence of the testatrix named the sum
that should be taken for each of these encouragements.
The news of Madame Graslin’s death, received throughout the department
as a calamity, was not accompanied by any rumor injurious to the memory
of this woman. This discretion was a homage rendered to so many virtues
by the hard-working Catholic population, which renewed in this little
corner of France the miracles of the “Lettres Edifiantes.”
Gerard, appointed guardian of Francis Graslin, and obliged, by terms of
the will, to reside at the chateau, moved there. But he did not marry
Denise Tascheron until three months after Veronique’s death. In her,
Francis found a second mother.