“A man must die of something, but love is nothing,” said Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoël.
“Alas, whatever the cause may be, Calyste is dying,” said his mother. “I recognize every symptom of consumption, the most horrible malady of my native land.”
“Calyste is dying?” said the Baron, opening his eyes, whence trickled two large tears which, caught in the many furrows of his face, slowly fell to the bottom of his cheeks—the only tears, no doubt, that he had ever shed in his life.
He dragged himself on to his feet, shuffled to his son’s bed, took his hands, and looked at him.
“What do you want, father?” said the boy.
“I want you to live!” cried the Baron.
“I cannot live without Béatrix,” said Calyste to the old man, who sank back into his chair.
“Where can I find a hundred louis to fetch the doctors from Paris?” cried the Baroness. “We have yet time.”
“A hundred louis!” exclaimed Zéphirine. “Will they save him?”
Without waiting for her sister-in-law’s reply, the old woman put her hands into her pocket-holes and untied an under petticoat, which fell with a heavy sound. She knew so well where she had sewn in her louis, that she ripped them out with a rapidity that seemed magical. The gold pieces rang as they dropped one by one. Old Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoël looked on with stupefied amazement.
“They can see you!” she whispered in her friend’s ear.
“Thirty-seven,” said Zéphirine, counting the gold.
“Everyone will know how much you have.”
“Forty-two.”
“Double louis, and all new! how did you get them, you who cannot see them?”
“I could feel them.—Here are a hundred and four louis,” cried Zéphirine. “Is that enough?”
“What are you doing?” asked the Chevalier du Halga, coming in, and unable to imagine what was the meaning of the old lady’s holding out her lap full of louis d’or.
Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoël explained the case in two words.
“I had heard of it,” said he, “and I came to bring you a hundred and forty louis I had kept at Calyste’s service, as he knows.”
The Chevalier took out of his pocket two rolls of coin, which he showed them. Mariotte, seeing all these riches, bid Gasselin lock the door.
“Gold will not restore him to health,” said the Baroness, in tears.
“But it may enable him to run after his Marquise,” said du Halga. “Come, Calyste!”
Calyste sat up in bed, and exclaimed gleefully:
“Let us be off!”
“Then he will live,” said the Baron, in a stricken voice, “and I may die.—Go and fetch the curé.”
These words struck them all with terror. Calyste, seeing his father turn ghastly pale from the painful agitation of this scene, could not restrain his tears. The curé, who knew the decision the doctors had come to, had gone off to fetch Mademoiselle des Touches; for at this moment he displayed as much admiration for her as he had not long since felt repugnance, and could defend her as a pastor defends one of the favorites of his flock.
On hearing of the Baron’s desperate extremity, a crowd gathered in the little street; the peasants, the marshmen, and the townsfolk all kneeling in the courtyard, while the priest administered the last sacrament to the old Breton warrior. Everybody was deeply touched to think of the father dying by the bed of his sick son. The extinction of the old family was regarded as a public calamity.
The ceremony struck Calyste; for a while his grief silenced his passion. All through the death struggles of this heroic defender of the Monarchy he remained on his knees, watching the approach of death, and weeping.
The old man died in his chair, in the presence of the assembled family.
“I die faithful to the King and religion. Great God, as the reward of my efforts, let Calyste live!” he said.
“I will live, father, and obey you,” replied the young man.
“If you would make my death as easy as Fanny has made my life, swear that you will marry.”
“I promise it, father.”
It was touching to see Calyste, or rather his ghost, leaning on the old Chevalier, a spectre leading a shade, following the Baron’s bier as chief mourner. The church and the little square before the porch were full of people, who had come from ten leagues round.
The Baroness and Zéphirine were deeply grieved when they saw that, in spite of his efforts to obey his father, Calyste was still sunk in an ominous stupor. On the first day of their mourning the Baroness led her son to the seat at the bottom of the garden, and questioned him. Calyste replied with gentle submissiveness, but his answers were heartbreaking.
“Mother,” said he, “there is no life left in me; what I eat does not nourish me, the air I breathe into my lungs does not renew my blood; the sun seems cold to me, and when it shines for you on the front of the house as at this moment, where you see carvings bathed in light, I see dim forms wrapped in mist. If Béatrix were here, all would be bright once more. There is but one thing in the world that has her color and form—this flower and these leaves,” and he drew out of his bosom the withered blossoms that the Marquise had given him.
The Baroness dared ask him no more; the madness betrayed by his replies seemed worse than the sorrow of his silence.
But Calyste was thrilled as he caught sight of Mademoiselle des Touches through the windows at opposite ends of the room. Félicité reminded him of Béatrix. Thus it was to her that the two women owed the one gleam of joy that lightened their griefs.
“Well, Calyste,” said Mademoiselle des Touches, when she saw him, “the carriage is ready; we will go together and find Béatrix. Come.”
The pale, thin face of the boy, all in black, was brightened by a flush, and a smile dawned
