We reached the door of her room, and the anxious priest opened it. I then saw Henriette, dressed in white, reclining on her little sofa in front of the fireplace; on the chimney-shelf were two vases filled with flowers; there were more flowers on a table in front of the window.—The Abbé’s face, amazed at this unexpectedly festal sight, and at the change in the room so suddenly restored to its original order, showed me that the dying woman had banished all the odious apparatus that surrounds a bed of sickness. She had exerted the last strength of a dying fever to dress her disordered room for the worthy reception of him whom she loved at this moment above all else.
Her haggard face, under a voluminous lace wrapper, had the greenish pallor of magnolia flowers when they first open, and looked like the first outline of a portrait of a head we love sketched in chalk on yellow-white canvas; but to understand how deeply the vulture’s talons clutched at my heart, picture this sketch with the eyes finished and full of life—hollow eyes, glittering with unwonted light in a colorless face. She no longer had the calm supremacy which she had derived from constant victory over her griefs. Her brow, the only part of her face that had preserved its fine proportions, expressed the aggressive audacity of suppressed craving and threats. In spite of the waxen hues of her drawn face, internal fires flashed forth with an effluence that resembled the quivering atmosphere over the fields on a hot day. Her hollow temples, her sunken cheeks, showed the bony structure of the face, and her white lips wore a smile that vaguely resembled the grin of a skull. Her gown, crossed over her bosom, betrayed how thin she had grown. The expression of her face plainly showed that she knew how much she was changed, and that it had brought her to despair. She was no longer the sportive Henriette, nor the sublime and saintly Madame de Mortsauf; but the nameless thing that Bossuet speaks of, struggling against annihilation, urged by hunger and cheated appetites, to a self-centered battle of life and death.
I sat down by her side and took her hand to kiss it; it was burning and dry. She read my pained surprise in the very effort I made to conceal it. Her discolored lips were stretched over her ravenous teeth in an attempt at one of those forced smiles under which we disguise alike irony and vengeance, the anticipation of pleasure, ecstasy of soul, or the fury of disappointment.
“It is death, my poor Félix,” she said; “and death does not charm you! Hideous death—death which every creature, even the boldest lover, holds in horror. Love ceases here! I knew it full well. Lady Dudley will never see you shocked by such a change. Oh! why have I so longed for you, Félix? And at last you are here—and I reward your devotion by the horrible spectacle which made the Comte de Rancé turn Trappist; I, who hoped to dwell in your remembrance beautiful, noble, like an immortal Lily, I destroy all your illusions. True love makes no calculations.
“But do not fly: stay. Monsieur Origet thought me much better this morning; I shall live again—be renewed under your eyes. And then, when I shall have recovered my strength a little, when I can take some food, I shall grow handsome again. I am but five-and-thirty; I may have some years of beauty yet. Happiness renews youth, and I mean to be happy. I have made the most delightful plans. We will leave them all at Clochegourde and go to Italy together.”
Tears rose to my eyes; I turned away to the table, as if to admire the flowers; the Abbé hastily came up to me and leaned over the nosegay: “No tears,” said he in a whisper.
“What, Henriette, have you ceased to love our dear valley?” said I, as an excuse for my sudden movement.
“No,” she said, touching my forehead with her lips with coaxing softness; “but without you it is fatal to me—without thee (sans toi),” she corrected herself, touching my ear with her hot lips to breathe the two words like a sigh.
I was dismayed by this crazy caress, which gave weight to the terrible hints of the two priests. My first surprise passed off; but though I could now exercise my reason, my will was not strong enough to restrain the nervous excitement that tormented me during this scene. I listened without replying, or rather I replied by a fixed smile and nods of assent, merely not to contradict her, as a mother treats her child. After being startled by the change in her person, I perceived that the woman who had once been so dignified in her loftiness, had now in her attitude, her voice, her manners, her looks, and her ideas, the artless simplicity of a child, the ingenuous grace, the restless movements, the absolute indifference to everything that is not itself or the object of its desire, which, in a child, cry out for protection.
Is it always thus with the dying? Do they cast off every social disguise, as a child has not yet assumed them? Or was it that the Countess, on the brink of eternity, while rejecting every human emotion but love, expressed its sweet innocence after the manner of Chloë?
“You will bring me health as you used to do, Félix,” said she, “and my valley will be good to me again. How can I help eating anything you give me? You are such a good nurse! And besides, you are so rich in health and strength that life is contagious from you.
“My
