I wanted to question this melancholy soul. Had Madeleine kept her thoughts to herself, or had she communicated her hatred to Jacques?
“You know,” said I, to open a conversation, “that you have in me a most devoted brother.”
“Your friendship is worthless to me,” said he. “I shall follow my mother,” and he gave me a fierce look of suffering.
“Jacques!” I cried, “You too?”
He coughed and turned away; then when he came back he hastily showed me his bloodstained handkerchief.
“You understand?” he said.
Thus each had a secret. As I afterwards saw, the brother and sister avoided each other. Henriette gone, everything at Clochegourde was falling into ruin.
“Madame is asleep,” Manette came to tell us, happy to see the Countess reprieved from pain.
In such fearful moments, though everybody knows the inevitable end, true affection goes crazy and clings to the smallest joys. The minutes are ages which we would gladly make ages of ease. We wish that the sufferer might sleep in roses, we would take their pain if we could; we long that the last sigh should be unconsciously breathed.
“Monsieur Deslandes had the flowers removed; they were too much for madame’s nerves,” said Manette.
So it was the flowers that had made her delirious; she was not guilty. The loves of earthly creatures, the joys of fruitfulness, the yearnings of plants had intoxicated her with their fragrance, and had no doubt revived the thoughts of happy love that had slumbered within her from her youth.
“Come, Monsieur Félix,” said Manette, “come and look at madame; she is as lovely as an angel.”
I went back to the dying woman’s room just as the setting sun was gilding the gabled roofs of the Château of Azay. All was still and clear. A softened light fell upon the bed where Henriette lay lapped in opium. At this moment the body was, so to speak, annihilated; the soul alone was seen in the face, as serene as a bright sky after a storm. Blanche and Henriette—the two beautiful aspects of the same woman—appeared before me, all the more beautiful because my memory, my mind, my imagination, helping nature, restored the perfection of each feature, to which the spirit triumphant lent fitful lights, coming and going and as she breathed.
The two priests sat at the foot of the bed. The Count stood thunderstruck, recognizing the banners of death floating above that adored head. I took a seat on the sofa she had been occupying. Then we four exchanged glances in which our admiration of her heavenly beauty mingled with tears of regret.
The gleam of intelligence announced the return of God to one of His loveliest tabernacles. The Abbé de Dominis and I communicated our mutual feelings by signs. Yes, the angels kept guard over Henriette! Yes, their swords flashed above that noble brow, where we now saw the august stamp of virtue which of old had made the soul visible, as it were, holding communion with the spirits of its own sphere. The lines of her face were purified, every feature grew grander and more majestic under the invisible censers of the seraphim that watched over her. The green hues of physical torment gave way to the perfect whiteness, the dead, cold pallor of approaching death.
Jacques and Madeleine came in; Madeleine gave us all a thrill by the adoring impulse which made her fall on her knees by the bed, clasp her hands and utter the inspired exclamation: “At last! This is my mother!” Jacques was smiling: he knew he was following his mother whither she was going.
“She is reaching the haven!” said the Abbé Birotteau.
The Abbé de Dominis looked at me, as much as to say: “Did I not tell you that the star would rise effulgent?”
Madeleine kept her eyes riveted on her mother, breathing with her breath, echoing her faint sighs, the last thread that held her to life, we counting them with dread lest it should break at each effort. Like an angel at the gates of the sanctuary the young girl was at once eager and calm, strong and prostrate.
At this moment the Angelus rang out from the village belfry; the waves of mellowed air brought up the sound in gusts, announcing that at this hour all Christendom was repeating the words spoken by the angel to the woman who made reparation for the sins of her sex. This evening the Ave Maria came to us as a greeting from Heaven. The prophecy was so sure, the event so near, that we melted into tears.
The murmurous sounds of the evening—a melodious breeze in the leaves, the last twitter of the birds, the buzz and hum of insects, the voice of waters, the plaintive cry of the tree-frog—all the land was taking leave of the loveliest lily of this valley and her simple, rural life. The religious poetry of the scene, added to all this natural poetry, so well expressed a chant of departure that our sobs began again.
Though the bedroom door was open, we were so lost in this terrible contemplation, trying to stamp on our minds the memory of it, forever, that we did not observe all the servants of the house kneeling in a group outside and putting up fervent prayers. All these poor souls, accustomed to hope, had thought they should still keep their mistress, and these unmistakable signs overwhelmed them. At a sign from the Abbé Birotteau the old huntsman went to fetch the Curé of Saché. The doctor, standing by the bed, as calm as science, holding his patient’s torpid hand, had signed to the confessor to express that this sleep was the last hour of ease that was given to the recalled angel. The moment had come for administering the last sacraments of the Church.
At nine o’clock she gently awoke and looked at us in mild surprise; we saw
