Part 15

But shortly a still further source of anxiety as to Maurice began to afflict the Le Cayla circle. His constitution, never strong, had been very much undermined by the privations and hardships he had undergone. He was compelled for a time to give up his duties; and after struggling through the winter to resort to his native air, spending a considerable part of the year--1837--once more in the dear old home. Here confidences were completely restored, and after a time the sweet change and the loving care of his sisters brought about a more favourable condition, and Maurice's health seemed reassured.

His life had also recently received another stimulating motive. Maurice had never been without friends, and the entrée into good Parisian society, where his distinguished, if pensive, appearance, engaging manners, and powers of conversation had made him a favourite. Here he had made the acquaintance of a young orphan lady, of good family and fortune, called Caroline de Gervain, who lived under the guardianship of an aunt. A mutual attachment sprang up between them, and the autumn of this year was enlivened for Le Cayla by a visit from Mdlle. de Gervain and her guardian.

Upon her brother's partial restoration to health, the chief care of Eugénie in regard to him was his disregard of all religious duties. On the day of his return to Paris, in January, 1838, she writes in her journal: "I enter again for the first time this room where you were only this morning. Oh, how sad is the chamber of an absent one! We see tokens of you everywhere, but find no part of the real person. Here are your shoes under the bed, the table quite filled, the mirror suspended from the nail, the books which you read yesterday evening before going to sleep, and I who kissed you, touched you, looked at you! What is this world where everything disappears? Maurice, my dear Maurice, oh!

"When you had gone I went to church, where I could pray and weep at my ease. What do you do, who never pray, when you are sorrowful, when your heart is bruised? For me, I feel that I have need of a consolation more than human, that it is necessary to have God for a friend."

On learning of his arrival she writes (February 8): "Oh! letters; letters from Paris, one of yours! You arrived well, happy, and welcome. God be praised! I have that only in my heart. I say to everybody, 'Maurice has written to us: he has finished his journey safely, had fine weather,' and a hundred things which come to me. A beautiful day, fine weather, sweet air, the clear sky. We only need to see the leaves to believe that it is the month of May. This radiant nature soothes the spirit, disposes it for some happiness. It was impossible, I thought, in my walk this morning, that something was not going to happen, and I have your letter. I did not deceive myself. These letters, this writing, what pleasure it gives! How the heart fastens there and is sustained. But after a while one becomes sad again, the joy falls, regret rekindles and finds that a letter is only a little thing in the place of some person. We are never satisfied; all our joys are mutilated. God wills it, God wills it thus that the better part of us which yearns shall only be satisfied in heaven. There shall be happiness in its fulness, there the eternal reunion."

Again she writes:--

"A letter from Caroline. What happiness to know you are so much loved, so cared for ... God be praised. I am tranquil. I see in all this a providential arrangement which makes everything for your good. And then you do not love the good God. His cares for you shine to my eyes like diamonds. See, my brother, all that comes to solace your poor position, these unhoped-for succours, this family affection, this mother, this sister, more than sister, so loving, so sweet, so beautiful, who promises you so much happiness. Do you not see something there, some Divine hand that orders your life? At present I hope for you a future better than the past--that past which has caused us so much suffering. But we all have our time of trouble, misfortune, servitude in Egypt, before the manna and the calm."

Again:--"Is the world in which you move rich enough for your needs? Maurice, if I could make you enter into some of my thoughts thereon, to show you what I believe and what I learn from devotional books, those beautiful reflections of the Gospel! If I could see you a Christian I would give life and everything for that."

After returning to Paris Maurice suffered a sharp relapse, upon his partial recovery from which his marriage was fixed to take place in November. Eugénie was to go to Paris to be present. Before departing she went to Rayssac to spend a few days with her dear friend, Louise de Bayne, who had recently lost her father. A few tender words in her journal upon saying farewell show that her character as a friend was no less true than as a sister: "At seven o'clock I embraced her, and left her all in tears. What affection there was in her good-bye, that pressure of the hand, the '_Come again!_' the utterance choked by tears! Poor, dear Louise, I have had the courage to leave her and not to weep at all.... But what matter? I love as much as another; what comes from the heart is worth as much as what flows from the eyes. But this tender Louise loves and weeps. It is because she is very sorry to lose me; she has need of a friend. She told me her trials, her plans, her prospects, perhaps her illusions. Women always have some illusion."

The journey to Paris and a stay there of some months was quite an event in the quiet life of Mdlle. de Guérin. On September 29, she writes in her journal: "Adieu, my little room; adieu my Cayla; adieu my copybook, which I will take with me, but it will go in my trunk." In the interval between this time and the following month of April the journal was, however, discontinued, or has not been found. From letters written during this period to her father and friends, we have pleasing glimpses of her life in Paris. During her visit there, as the guest of the aunt of Mdlle. de Gervain, she was welcomed by the best society, and spent much time in visiting the many places of interest, and making the acquaintance of an hitherto unknown world. Her one source of anxiety was the continued enfeebled condition of her brother's health. Writing to her friend Louise, she says, alluding to this: "When I am with others I imitate their liveliness, but at church and alone I have my own thoughts. I have everything I could wish for; they all love me here; I ought to be happy, but I am weary in spirit, and I say to myself that happiness is nowhere in this world."

The wedding was duly celebrated with much rejoicing and gaiety, and Eugénie wrote a charming account of it to her father, giving all details, as only a woman can, and declaring that all had passed as happily as at the marriage of Cana. She speaks in terms of loving praise of Maurice's "angel of a wife," and does not forget to say that upon the marriage morn Caro read to her husband a chapter of the _Imitation_.

The interval between December and the succeeding July was spent by Eugénie partly at Paris with her brother, and partly in visiting friends at Nevers and other places. She was deeply solicitous for her brother and his young wife. This was not without cause, for the young bride had married a dying man.

During her stay at Nevers, in April, she recommences her journal to her brother, which he was never to read:--

"Is it eight days, eight months, eight years, eight ages? I know not how long, but it seems endless in my weariness since I left you, my brother, my poor invalid. Is it well with you? Is it better? Is it worse?... What painful ignorance, and how difficult to bear, this ignorance of heart, the only thing which makes us suffer, or which makes us suffer more. It is beautiful weather. One feels everywhere the sun and the presence of flowers, which would do you good. Springtime warmth would be more curative for you than any medicine. I say this in hope, alone in my hermit's chamber, with a chair, cross, and little table, under a little window where I write. From time to time I look at the sky and hear the bells and the passers-by in the streets of Nevers, the sad. Does Paris spoil me, make me gloomy anywhere else? Never was there a city more desolate, dark, and wearying, notwithstanding the _charmes_ that inhabit it, Marie and her amiable family. I have tried everything, even drawing my distaff from its case where it has been since my departure from Le Cayla. It recalled to me the story of the shepherd, who, arriving at the Court, kept there the chest containing his crook, and sometimes found pleasure in opening it. I have also found pleasure in again seeing my distaff and spinning a little. But I spun so many things besides!"

Here, also, she received from her brother his last letter:--

"_April 8th, 1839._

"Rain and cold must have accompanied you all the journey, my dear friend; they tell me that every day the weather has been horrid. But, at the time of writing, I have the consolation of thinking that for two days you have enjoyed rest after fatigue. In that assurance my thought has left the road to Nevers to follow that for Toulouse, where Eran is going, always with the same cortége 'of wind, of cold, and of rain.' Poor Eran! He left me with an emotion that touched me very much. This journey to Paris, and all that has happened in a few months, has drawn together and mingled our lives (Eran's and mine) more than twenty years had been able to do. We have always lived far away from each other, and our characters have not helped much to make up for distance. At length, events have hastened what must happen sooner or later, at our age, and we parted with more feeling in our hearts.... I live quite tranquil under my curtains, waiting with patience, thanks to Caro's care, to books and dreams, the healing which the sun will bring me. I like this almost complete retreat from the rest of the world; for I am not such an enemy to solitude as you may fancy; and there are in me quite strong tastes and needs which the warmest lovers of a country life would not disavow. I hope that God will cause these thoughts to be matured and, at the same time, the means of realising them.

"M. Buquet came to see me the day of your departure, a few hours after. He came again yesterday to _talk_ with me, as you wished. He is to pay another visit next week; at length I hope all will go on for the best." ...

An entry in the journal (May 19) of Mdlle. De Guérin affords us another pleasant glimpse of Louise: "A letter from Louise, full of interest for you, nothing but heart, spirit, charm from one end to the other; a way of speaking that they only have amongst those heights of Rayssac. The solitude causes this. Ideas come there, the like of which there are nowhere else in the world--unknown, beautiful as flowers or mosses. Charming Louise, how I love her! I find her this time in a calm, a _désabusé_, which astonishes me; she generally has some illusion. I am going to join the other Louise, who so much resembles this one (do you not find it so?), and who prays for your recovery. 'The other day,' she writes to me (Louise de Rayssac), 'I was at the Platér parish church with my aunt; I approached a saintly girl who frequents this church from morning to evening, and who is greatly respected for her piety. I raised a corner of her black veil, and said to her very low: "Pardon, Mdlle., I wish to ask for prayers for a sick young man, brother of the person whom I love the most in the world." "Well, I will pray," she said to me, with that air of modesty which raised her still more in my esteem. I have not seen her again. Is not this a pretty, pious trait, my brother, this young lady seeking prayers for you with an air of celestial interest? She is charming."

April 24, her journal contains this entry: "How all is laughing, what life the sun has, how sweet and light is the air! A letter, news of the best, dear invalid, and all is changed for me--within, without. _I am happy to-day._"

Maurice, however, grew so alarmingly worse that it soon became apparent that if he were to see his own old home again no time was to be lost. Probably a presentiment of his approaching end made Maurice desire to die at Le Cayla. During her travels Eugénie received information that he had set out thither with his wife, and he wished her to join them at Tours. Hastening thither, they proceeded by easy steps to Le Cayla, arriving there on July 8, 1839.

As these two lives were so closely united, the rest of that of the brother may be fittingly quoted from the sister's journal, written some time after the bitterness of the last parting.

"It was on July 8, twenty days from our leaving Paris, at nearly six o'clock in the evening, that we came in sight of Le Cayla, the land of hope, the resting-place of our poor invalid. His thoughts had been there only, as the one place on earth, for a long time. I never saw in him a more ardent desire, and it grew more and more keen as we approached. One might have said that he was in a hurry to arrive, to be in time to die there. Had he any presentiment of his end? In the first transports of joy at the sight of Le Cayla, he pressed the hand of Erembert, who was by his side. He made a sign to us all as of a discovery, to me who had never less emotion of pleasure. I was contemplating sorrowfully everything in this sad return, even my sister, and my father, who were at some little distance, coming to meet us. Distressing meeting! My father was dismayed; Marie wept at seeing Maurice. He was so changed, so wasted, so pale, so shaky upon his horse, that he hardly seemed alive. It was terrifying. The journey had killed him. If the thought of arriving had not sustained him, I doubt whether he would have accomplished it. You know something of what he had to suffer, poor dear martyr! He embraced his father and his sister without showing himself to be much moved. At the first sight of the chateau he seemed in a sort of ecstasy; the perturbation that it caused him was unique, and must have exhausted all his faculty of sensation; I never saw him so keenly touched by anything again. He, however, affectionately greeted the reapers who were cutting our wheat, shook hands with some of them, and with all the servants who gathered round us.

"When we came to the salon: 'Ah, how nice it is here,' said he, sitting down on the couch, and he again embraced my father. We were all regarding him with content. It was still a family joy. His wife went to do some unpacking; I took her place beside him, and kissing him on the brow, which I had not done for a long time, said, 'How well you look! You will quickly recover here.' '_I hope so_--I am at home.' 'Let your wife also consider herself as at home; make her understand that she is one of the family, and do as in her own house.' 'No doubt, no doubt.' I do not remember what other things we said in those moments while we were alone. Caroline came down, supper was announced, which Maurice found delicious. He ate of everything with appetite. 'Ah!' he said to Marie, 'your cooking is excellent.'

"My God! what followed takes hold of my heart. My life is there only.

"I have a future only by faith, by bonds which are attached to Maurice, and from him to the skies....

"But let us return to his life--to the last and precious recollections of it which are left to me.

"We hoped much from the climate, from his native air, and from the warm temperature of our South. The second day from our arrival it was cold; the invalid felt it, and had shiverings. His finger-ends were like ice. I saw clearly that there was not the improvement we had hoped, that he could not recover so quickly whilst these attacks returned. There was no fever after, and the doctor reassured us. These doctors are often deceived, or deceivers. We induced the invalid not to leave his room the following day, attributing the chill he had taken to the coldness of the salon. He resigned himself, as he always did, though somewhat unwillingly, to what we wished; but it was so dull up there, and it became so warm by-and-bye, that I myself invited him to come down. 'Oh! yes,' he said, 'Here I am far from everybody. There is more life below with you all, and then there is the terrace. I will go there to take a walk. Let us go down.' That terrace especially drew him to enjoy the outside air, the sun, and that beautiful nature which he so much loved. I believe it was on that day that he pulled some weeds round the pomegranate tree, and dug some feet of Peruvian lilies. Assisted by his wife he stretched a wire along the wall for the jasmine and creepers. That appeared to amuse him. "So each day I will try my strength a little," said he, on returning indoors. He never went out again. The weakness increased, the least movement fatigued him. He only left his armchair by necessity, or to take a few steps, at the prayer of his wife, who tried everything to draw him from his lethargy. She sang, she played, and all often without effect--at least, I was not able to see any impression. He remained the same to everything, his head leaning upon the side of his chair, his eyes closed. He had, however, some better times some brief periods in which there were flashes towards life. It was in one of these moments that he went to the piano and played an air--poor air, which I shall have in my heart always.

"I wish to tell you, also, how much this dear brother has given me consolation in regard to his Christian sentiments. This dates, not from his last days only; he had kept Easter at Paris. At the beginning of Lent he wrote to me: 'The Abbé Buquel came to see me; to-morrow he will come again to talk with me as you desired.' Dear friend! Yes, I had desired that for his happiness, and he had done it for mine, not conceding for complacency, but doing it from _conviction_; he was incapable of the appearance of an act of faith. I have seen him alone at Tours, in his room on Sunday reading prayers. For some time he had enjoyed works of piety, and I have been thankful that I left with him Saint Theresa and Fénélon, which have done him much good. God ceased not to inspire me for him. So I had the fancy to bring for the journey a good little book, pious and charming to read, translated from the Italian--'Father Quadrupani'--which gave him much pleasure. From time to time he asked me to read him a few pages: 'Read me a little of Quadrupani.' He listened with attention, then signed to me when he had had enough, reflected thereon, closed his eyes and rested, impressing upon his mind the sweet and comforting holy thoughts. Thus every day at Cayla we read to him some sermons of Bossuet and some passages from 'The Imitation of Christ.' He also wished to have some entertaining reading, and having nothing new in our library, we began Scott's 'Old Mortality.' He went through one volume with some appearance of interest, and then gave it up. He was soon fatigued with anything; we did not know what to do in order to divert him. Visits brought him little relief; he talked only with his doctor--a man of intelligence, who pleased the invalid and sustained his interest. I noticed these moral influences, and even in his greatest prostration that intelligent nature rose up with every kindred touch. Thus the evening, or evening but one, before his death he laughed heartily at your _feuilleton_, so pleasantly witty: _Il faut que jeunesse se passe_, with which he was charmed. He wished to have it read over again: 'Write to d'Aurevilly,' he said to me, 'and tell him it is a long time since I have laughed as I have just done.' Alas! he laughed no more! You gave him the last intellectual pleasure that he had. Everything was enjoyable that came to him from you. Friendship was the sweetest and strongest of his sentiments, that which he felt the most deeply, of which he loved best to speak, and which, I can say, he has taken with him to the tomb. _Oh! yes, he loved you to the end._ I do not know on what occasion, being alone with him, speaking of you, I said to him: 'Do you like me to write to your friend?' '_Do I like it?_' he said, with his heart in his voice. The same day, on leaving him, I sent you a bulletin.

"We thought him very weak; however, I hoped always. I had written to the Prince of Hohenlohe. I expected a miracle. His cough was easier, his appetite sustained him. The fatal evening he yet dined with us: the last family dinner! There were some figs which he wished for, and which I was unkind enough to forbid; but the others having approved, he ate one, which did him neither good nor harm, and I was saved from the bitterness of having deprived him of something. I wish to tell everything, to preserve every incident of his last moments, much grieved not to remember more. A word that he said to my father has stayed with me. My poor father returned from Gaillac quite hot, with his medicines. When Maurice saw him he said, holding out his hand to him, 'One must confess that you love your children well,' And, indeed, my father did love him well! A little time after the poor invalid, rising with difficulty from his chair to go into the adjoining room, 'I am very low,' he said, speaking as to himself. I heard him, that sentence of death from his mouth, without answering a word, without, perhaps, quite believing it. But I was struck. In the evening they carried him with his chair into his room. While he was going to bed I talked with Erembert: 'He is very feeble to-night, but his chest is freer, the cough is gone. If we can get on to the month of October he will be saved.' It was the 18th July, at ten o'clock at night. He had a bad night. I heard his wife speak to him, rising often. All was heard in my room--I listened to all. I went soon in the morning to see him, and his look struck me. It was a fixed look. 'What does it mean?' I said to the doctor, who came early. 'It means that Maurice is worse.' Ah, my God! Erembert went to tell my father, who came quickly. He went immediately out, and consulted with the doctor, who had told him it was necessary to think of the last sacraments. The Curé was sent for, also my sister, who was at church. My father begged the doctor, M. Facien, to prepare Caroline for the terrible tidings. He took her apart. I went to join her immediately, and found her all in tears. I heard her say, 'I knew it.' She knew that he must die! 'For three months I have been preparing myself for this sacrifice.' Thus the stroke of death did not terrify her, but she was disconsolate.