Chapter 21

“The person to whom I refer is pretty; she is young, and wishes to live at Montegnac. If you will marry her you will help to soften my last hours. I will not dwell upon her virtues now; I only say her nature is a rare one; in the matter of grace and youth and beauty, one look will suffice; you are now about to see her at the hermitage. As we return home you must give me a serious yes or no.”

Hearing this confidence, Gerard unconsciously quickened his oars, which made Madame Graslin smile. Denise, who was living alone, away from all eyes, at the hermitage, recognized Madame Graslin and immediately opened the door. Veronique and Gerard entered. The poor girl could not help a blush as she met the eyes of the young man, who was greatly surprised at her beauty.

“I hope Madame Farrabesche has not let you want for anything?” said Veronique.

“Oh no! madame, see!” and she pointed to her breakfast.

“This is Monsieur Gerard, of whom I spoke to you,” went on Veronique. “He is to be my son’s guardian, and after my death you shall live together at the chateau until his majority.”

“Oh! madame, do not talk in that way!”

“My dear child, look at me!” replied Veronique, addressing Denise, in whose eyes the tears rose instantly. “She has just arrived from New York,” she added, by way of introduction to Gerard.

The engineer put several questions about the new world to the young woman, while Veronique, leaving them alone, went to look at the third and more distant lake of the Gabou. It was six o’clock as Veronique and Gerard returned in the boat toward the chalet.

“Well?” she said, looking at him.

“You have my promise.”

“Though you are, I know, without prejudices,” she went on, “I must not leave you ignorant of the reason why that poor girl, brought back here by homesickness, left the place originally.”

“A false step?”

“Oh, no!” said Veronique. “Should I offer her to you if that were so? She is the sister of a workman who died on the scaffold--”

“Ah! Tascheron,” he said, “the murderer of old Pingret.”

“Yes, she is the sister of a murderer,” said Madame Graslin, in a bitter tone; “you are at liberty to take back your promise and--”

She did not finish, and Gerard was obliged to carry her to the bench before the chalet, where she remained unconscious for some little time. When she opened her eyes Gerard was on his knees before her and he said instantly:--

“I will marry Denise.”

Madame Graslin took his head in both hands and kissed him on the forehead; then, seeing his surprise at so much gratitude, she pressed his hand and said:

“Before long you will know the secret of all this. Let us go back to the terrace, for it is late; I am very tired, but I must look my last on that dear plain.”

Though the day had been insupportably hot, the storms which during this year devastated parts of Europe and of France but respected the Limousin, had run their course in the basin of the Loire, and the atmosphere was singularly clear. The sky was so pure that the eye could seize the slightest details on the horizon. What language can render the delightful concert of busy sounds produced in the village by the return of the workers from the fields? Such a scene, to be rightly given, needs a great landscape artist and also a great painter of the human face. Is there not, by the bye, in the lassitude of Nature and that of man a curious affinity which is difficult to grasp? The depressing heat of a dog-day and the rarification of the air give to the least sound made by human beings all its signification. The women seated on their doorsteps and waiting for their husbands (who often bring back the children) gossip with each other while still at work. The roofs are casting up the lines of smoke which tell of the evening meal, the gayest among the peasantry; after which, they sleep. All actions express the tranquil cheerful thoughts of those whose day’s work is over. Songs are heard very different in character from those of the morning; in this the peasants imitate the birds, whose warbling at night is totally unlike their notes at dawn. All nature sings a hymn to rest, as it sang a hymn of joy to the coming sun. The slightest movements of living beings seem tinted then with the soft, harmonious colors of the sunset cast upon the landscape and lending even to the dusty roadways a placid air. If any dared deny the influence of this hour, the loveliest of the day, the flowers would protest and intoxicate his senses with their penetrating perfumes, which then exhale and mingle with the tender hum of insects and the amorous note of birds.

The brooks which threaded the plain beyond the village were veiled in fleecy vapor. In the great meadows through which the high-road ran,--bordered with poplars, acacias, and ailanthus, wisely intermingled and already giving shade,--enormous and justly celebrated herds of cattle were scattered here and there, some still grazing, others ruminating. Men, women, and children were ending their day’s work in the hay-field, the most picturesque of all the country toils. The night air, freshened by distant storms, brought on its wings the satisfying odors of the newly cut grass or the finished hay. Every feature of this beautiful panorama could be seen perfectly; those who feared a coming storm were finishing in haste the hay-stacks, while others followed with their pitchforks to fill the carts as they were driven along the rows. Others in the distance were still mowing, or turning the long lines of fallen grass to dry it, or hastening to pile it into cocks. The joyous laugh of the merry workers mingling with the shouts of the children tumbling each other in the hay, rose on the air. The eye could distinguish the pink, red, or blue petticoats, the kerchiefs, and the bare legs and arms of the women, all wearing broad-brimmed hats of a coarse straw, and the shirts and trousers of the men, the latter almost invariably white. The last rays of the sun were filtering through the long lines of poplars planted beside the trenches which divided the plain into meadows of unequal size, and caressing the groups of horses and carts, men, women, children, and cattle. The cattlemen and the shepherd-girls were beginning to collect their flocks to the sound of rustic horns.

The scene was noisy, yet silent,--a paradoxical statement, which will surprise only those to whom the character of country life is still unknown. From all sides came the carts, laden with fragrant fodder. There was something, I know not what, of torpor in the scene. Veronique walked slowly and silently between Gerard and the rector, who had joined her on the terrace.

Through the openings made by the rural lanes running down below the terrace to the main street of Montegnac Gerard and Monsieur Bonnet could see the faces of men, women, and children turned toward them; watching more particularly, no doubt, for Madame Graslin. How much of tenderness and gratitude was expressed on those faces! How many benedictions followed Veronique’s footsteps! With what reverent attention were the three benefactors of a whole community regarded! Man was adding a hymn of gratitude to the other chants of evening.

While Madame Graslin walked on with her eyes fastened on the long, magnificent green pastures, her most cherished creation, the priest and the mayor did not take their eyes from the groups below, whose expression it was impossible to misinterpret; pain, sadness, and regret, mingled with hope, were plainly on all those faces. No one in Montegnac or its neighborhood was ignorant that Monsieur Roubaud had gone to Paris to bring the best physician science afforded, or that the benefactress of the whole district was in the last stages of a fatal illness. In all the markets through a circumference of thirty miles the peasants asked those of Montegnac,--

“How is your good woman now?”

The great vision of death hovered over the land, and dominated that rural picture. Afar, in the fields, more than one reaper sharpening his scythe, more than one young girl, her arms resting on her fork, more than one farmer stacking his hay, seeing Madame Graslin, stood mute and thoughtful, examining that noble woman, the blessing of the Correze, seeking some favorable sign or merely looking to admire her, impelled by a feeling that arrested their work.

“She is out walking; therefore she must be better.”

These simple words were on every lip.

Madame Graslin’s mother, seated on the iron bench which Veronique had formerly placed at the end of the terrace, studied every movement of her daughter; she watched her step in walking, and a few tears rolled from her eyes. Aware of the secret efforts of that superhuman courage, she knew that Veronique at that moment was suffering the tortures of a horrible agony, and only maintained herself erect by the exercise of her heroic will. The tears--they seemed almost red--which forced their way from those aged eyes, and furrowed that wrinkled face, the parchment of which seemed incapable of softening under any emotion, excited those of young Graslin, whom Monsieur Ruffin had between his knees.

“What is the matter, my boy?” said the tutor, anxiously.

“My grandmother is crying,” he answered.

Monsieur Ruffin, whose eyes were on Madame Graslin as she came toward them, now looked at Madame Sauviat, and was powerfully struck by the aspect of that old head, like that of a Roman matron, petrified with grief and moistened with tears.

“Madame, why did you not prevent her from coming out?” said the tutor to the old mother, august and sacred in her silent grief.

As Veronique advanced majestically with her naturally fine and graceful step, Madame Sauviat, driven by despair at the thought of surviving her daughter, allowed the secret of many things that awakened curiosity to escape her.

“How can she walk like that,” she cried, “wearing a horrible horsehair shirt, which pricks into her skin perpetually?”

The words horrified the young man, who was not insensible to the exquisite grace of Veronique’s movements; he shuddered as he thought of the constant and terrific struggle of the soul to maintain its empire thus over the body.

“She has worn it thirteen years,--ever since she ceased to nurse the boy,” said the old woman. “She has done miracles here, but if her whole life were known they ought to canonize her. Since she came to Montegnac no one has ever seen her eat, and do you know why? Aline serves her three times a day a piece of dry bread, and vegetables boiled in water, without salt, on a common plate of red earth like those they feed the dogs on. Yes, that’s how the woman lives who has given new life to this whole canton. She kneels to say her prayers on the edge of that hair-shirt. She says she could not have that smiling air you know she always has unless she practised these austerities. I tell you this,” added the old woman, sinking her voice, “so that you may repeat it to the doctor that Monsieur Roubaud has gone to fetch. If they could prevent my daughter from continuing these penances, perhaps they might still save her, though death has laid its hand upon her head. See for yourself! Ah! I must be strong indeed to have borne so many things these fifteen years.”

The old woman took her grandson’s hand and passed it over her forehead and cheeks as if the child’s touch shed a healing balm there; then she kissed it with an affection the secret of which belongs to grandmothers as much as it belongs to mothers.

Veronique was now only a few feet from the bench, in company with Clousier, the rector, and Gerard. Illuminated by the glow of the setting sun, she shone with a dreadful beauty. Her yellow forehead, furrowed with long wrinkles massed one above the other like layers of clouds, revealed a fixed thought in the midst of inward troubles. Her face, devoid of all color, entirely white with the dead, greenish whiteness of plants without light, was thin, though not withered, and bore the signs of terrible physical sufferings produced by mental anguish. She fought her soul with her body, and _vice versa_. She was so completely destroyed that she no more resembled herself than an old woman resembles her portrait as a girl. The ardent expression of her eyes declared the despotic empire exercised by a devout will over a body reduced to what religion requires it to be. In this woman the soul dragged the flesh as the Achilles of profane story dragged Hector; for fifteen years she dragged it victoriously along the stony paths of life around the celestial Jerusalem she hoped to enter, not by a vile deception, but with acclamation. No solitary that ever lived in the dry and arid deserts of Africa was ever more master of his senses than was Veronique in her magnificent chateau, among the soft, voluptuous scenery of that opulent land, beneath the protecting mantle of that rich forest, whence science, the heir of Moses’ wand, had called forth plenty, prosperity, and happiness for a whole region. She contemplated the results of twelve years’ patience, a work which might have made the fame of many a superior man, with a gentle modesty such as Pontorno has painted in the sublime face of his “Christian Chastity caressing the Celestial Unicorn.” The mistress of the manor, whose silence was respected by her companions when they saw that her eyes were roving over those vast plains, once arid, and now fertile by her will, walked on, her arms folded, with a distant look, as if to some far horizon, on her face.

XX. THE LAST STRUGGLE

Suddenly she stopped, a few feet from her mother, who looked at her as the mother of Christ must have looked at her son upon the cross. She raised her hand, and pointing to the spot where the road to Montegnac branched from the highway, she said, smiling:--

“See that carriage with the post-horses; Monsieur Roubaud is returning to us. We shall now know how many hours I have to live.”

“Hours?” said Gerard.

“Did I not tell you I was taking my last walk?” she replied. “I have come here to see for the last time this glorious scene in all its splendor!” She pointed first to the village where the whole population seemed to be collected in the church square, and then to the beautiful meadows glowing in the last rays of the setting sun. “Ah!” she said, “let me see the benediction of God in the strange atmospheric condition to which we owe the safety of our harvest. Around us, on all sides, tempests, hail, lightning, have struck incessantly and pitilessly. The common people think thus, why not I? I do so need to see in this a happy augury for what awaits me after death!”

The child stood up and took his mother’s hand and laid it on his head. Veronique, deeply affected by the action, so full of eloquence, took up her son with supernatural strength, seating him on her left arm as though he were still an infant at her breast, saying, as she kissed him:--

“Do you see that land, my son? When you are a man, continue there your mother’s work.”

“Madame,” said the rector, in a grave voice, “a few strong and privileged beings are able to contemplate their coming death face to face, to fight, as it were, a duel with it, and to display a courage and an ability which challenge admiration. You show us this terrible spectacle; but perhaps you have too little pity for us; leave us at least the hope that you may be mistaken, and that God will allow you to finish that which you have begun.”

“All I have done is through you, my friends,” she said. “I have been useful, I can be so no longer. All is fruitful around us now; nothing is barren and desolated here except my heart. You well know, my dear rector, that I can only find peace and pardon _there_.”

She stretched her hand toward the cemetery. Never had she said as much since the day of her arrival, when she was taken with sudden illness at the same spot. The rector looked attentively at his penitent, and the habit of penetration he had long acquired made him see that in those simple words he had won another triumph. Veronique must have made a mighty effort over herself to break her twelve years’ silence with a speech that said so much. The rector clasped his hands with a fervent gesture that was natural to him as he looked with deep emotion at the members of this family whose secrets had passed into his heart.

Gerard, to whom the words “peace and pardon” must have seemed strange, was bewildered. Monsieur Ruffin, with his eyes fixed on Veronique, was stupefied. At this instant the carriage came rapidly up the avenue.

“There are five of them!” cried the rector, who could see and count the travellers.

“Five!” exclaimed Gerard. “Can five know more than two?”

“Ah,” cried Madame Graslin suddenly, grasping the rector’s arm, “the _procureur-general_ is among them! What is he doing here?”

“And papa Grossetete, too!” cried Francis.

“Madame,” said the rector, supporting Veronique, and leading her apart a few steps, “show courage; be worthy of yourself.”

“But what can he want?” she replied, leaning on the balustrade. “Mother!” (the old woman ran to her daughter with an activity that belied her years.) “I shall see him again,” she said.

“As he comes with Monsieur Grossetete,” said the rector, “he can have none but good intentions.”

“Ah! monsieur, my child will die!” cried Madame Sauviat, seeing the effect of the rector’s words on her daughter’s face. “How can her heart survive such emotions? Monsieur Grossetete has always hitherto prevented that man from seeing Veronique.”

Madame Graslin’s face was on fire.

“Do you hate him so much?” said the Abbe Bonnet.

“She left Limoges to escape the sight of him, and to escape letting the whole town into her secrets,” said Madame Sauviat, terrified at the change she saw on Madame Graslin’s features.

“Do you not see that he will poison my few remaining hours? When I ought to be thinking of heaven he will nail me to earth,” cried Veronique.

The rector took her arm and constrained her to walk aside with him. When they were alone he stopped and gave her one of those angelic looks with which he was able to calm the violent convulsions of the soul.

“If it is really so,” he said, “as your confessor, I order you to receive him, to be kind and affectionate to him, to quit that garment of wrath, and forgive him as God will forgive you. Can there still be the remains of passion of a soul I believed to be purified. Burn this last incense on the altar of your penitence, or else your repentance is a lie.”

“There was still that effort to make--and it is made,” she answered, wiping her eyes. “The devil lurked in that last fold of my heart, and God, no doubt, put into Monsieur de Grandville’s mind the thought that brings him here. Ah! how many times must God strike me?” she cried.

She stopped, as if to say a mental prayer; then she returned to Madame Sauviat and said in a low voice:

“My dear mother, be kind and gentle to Monsieur de Grandville.”

The old woman clasped her hands with a feverish shudder.

“There is no longer any hope,” she said, seizing the rector’s hand.

The carriage, announced by the postilion’s whip, was now coming up the last slope; the gates were opened, it entered the courtyard, and the travellers came at once to the terrace. They were the illustrious Archbishop Dutheil, who was on his way to consecrate Monseigneur Gabriel de Rastignac, the _procureur-general_, Monsieur de Grandville, Monsieur Grossetete, Monsieur Roubaud, and one of the most celebrated physicians in Paris, Horace Bianchon.

“You are very welcome,” said Veronique, advancing toward them,--“you particularly,” she added, offering her hand to Monsieur de Grandville, who took it and pressed it.

“I counted on the intervention of Monseigneur and on that of my friend Monsieur Grossetete to obtain for me a favorable reception,” said the _procureur-general_. “It would have been a life-long regret to me if I did not see you again.”

“I thank those who brought you here,” replied Veronique, looking at the Comte de Grandville for the first time in fifteen years. “I have felt averse to you for a very long time, but I now recognize the injustice of my feelings; and you shall know why, if you can stay till the day after to-morrow at Montegnac.” Then turning to Horace Bianchon and bowing to him, she added: “Monsieur will no doubt confirm my apprehensions. God must have sent you, Monseigneur,” she said, turning to the archbishop. “In memory of our old friendship you will not refuse to assist me in my last moments. By whose mercy is it that I have about me all the beings who have loved and supported me in life?”

As she said the word _loved_ she turned with a gracious look to Monsieur de Grandville, who was touched to tears by this mark of feeling. Silence fell for a few moments on every one. The doctors wondered by what occult power this woman could still keep her feet, suffering as she must have suffered. The other three men were so shocked at the ravages disease had suddenly made in her that they communicated their thoughts by their eyes only.

“Allow me,” she said, with her accustomed grace, “to leave you now with these gentlemen; the matter is urgent.”

She bowed to her guests, gave an arm to each of the doctors, and walked toward the chateau feebly and slowly, with a difficulty which told only too plainly of the coming catastrophe.

“Monsieur Bonnet,” said the archbishop, looking at the rector, “you have accomplished a miracle.”

“Not I, but God, Monseigneur,” he replied.

“They said she was dying,” said Monsieur Grossetete, “but she is dead; there is nothing left of her but spirit.”

“A soul,” said Gerard.

“And yet she is still the same,” cried the _procureur-general_.

“A stoic after the manner of the Porch philosophers,” said the tutor.

They walked in silence the whole length of the balustrade, looking at the landscape still red with the declining light.

“To me who saw this scene thirteen years ago,” said the archbishop, pointing to the fertile plain, the valley, and the mountains of Montegnac, “this miracle is as extraordinary as that we have just witnessed. But how comes it that you allow Madame Graslin to walk about? She ought to be in her bed.”

“She was there,” said Madame Sauviat; “for ten days she did not leave it; but to-day she insisted on getting up to take a last look at the landscape.”

“I can understand that she wanted to bid farewell to her great creation,” said Monsieur de Grandville; “but she risked expiring on this terrace.”

“Monsieur Roubaud told us not to thwart her,” said Madame Sauviat.

“What a stupendous work! what a miracle has been accomplished!” said the archbishop, whose eyes were roving over the scene before him. “She has literally sown the desert! But we know, monsieur,” he added, turning to Gerard, “that your scientific knowledge and your labors have a large share in it.”

“They have been only the workmen,” replied the mayor. “Yes, the hands only; she has been the thought.”

Madame Sauviat here left the group, to hear, if possible, the decision of the doctors.

“We need some heroism ourselves,” said Monsieur de Grandville to the rector and the archbishop, “to enable us to witness this death.”

“Yes,” said Monsieur Grossetete, who overheard him, “but we ought to do much for such a friend.”

After several turns up and down the terrace, these persons, full of solemn thoughts, saw two farmers approaching them, sent as a deputation from the village, where the inhabitants were in a state of painful anxiety to know the sentence pronounced by the physician from Paris.

“They are still consulting, and as yet we know nothing, my friends,” said the archbishop.

As he spoke, Monsieur Roubaud appeared coming toward them, and they all hurried to meet him.

“Well?” said the mayor.