Chapter 23

“He lost his mind when he saw what he thought his happiness destroyed by unforeseen circumstances. The unhappy man, misled by his love, went headlong from a delinquent act to crime--from robbery to a double murder. He left my mother’s house an innocent man, he returned a guilty one. I alone knew that there was neither premeditation nor any of the aggravating circumstances on which he was sentenced to death. A hundred times I thought of betraying myself to save him; a hundred times a horrible and necessary restraint stopped the words upon my lips. Undoubtedly, my presence near the scene had contributed to give him the odious, infamous, ignoble courage of a murderer. Were it not for me, he would have fled. I had formed that soul, trained that mind, enlarged that heart; I knew it; he was incapable of cowardice or meanness. Do justice to that involuntarily guilty arm, do justice to him, whom God, in his mercy, has allowed to sleep in his quiet grave, where you have wept for him, suspecting, it may be, the extenuating truth. Punish, curse the guilty creature before you! Horrified by the crime when once committed, I did my best to hide my share in it. Trusted by my father--I, who was childless--to lead a child to God, I led him to the scaffold! Ah! punish me, curse me, the hour has come!”

Saying these words, her eyes shone with the stoic pride of a savage. The archbishop, standing behind her, and as if protecting her with the pastoral cross, abandoned his impassible demeanor and covered his eyes with his right hand. A muffled cry was heard, as though some one were dying. Two persons, Gerard and Roubaud, received and carried away in their arms, Denise Tascheron, unconscious. That sight seemed for an instant to quench the fire in Veronique’s eyes; she was evidently uneasy; but soon her self-control and serenity of martyrdom resumed their sway.

“You now know,” she continued, “that I deserve neither praise or blessing for my conduct here. I have led in sight of Heaven, a secret life of bitter penance which Heaven will estimate. My life before men has been an immense reparation for the evils I have caused; I have marked my repentance ineffaceably on the earth; it will last almost eternally here below. It is written on those fertile fields, in the prosperous village, in the rivulets brought from the mountains to water the plain once barren and fruitless, now green and fertile. Not a tree will be cut for a hundred years to come but the people of this region will know of the remorse that made it grow. My repentant soul will still live here among you. What you will owe to its efforts, to a fortune honorably acquired, is the heritage of its repentance,--the repentance of her who caused the crime. All has been repaired so far as society is concerned; but I am still responsible for that life, crushed in its bud,--a life confided to me and for which I am now required to render an account.”

The flame of her eyes was veiled in tears.

“There is here, before me, a man,” she continued, “who, because he did his duty strictly, has been to me an object of hatred which I thought eternal. He was the first inflictor of my punishment. My feet were still too deep in blood, I was too near the deed, not to hate justice. So long as that root of anger lay in my heart, I knew there was still a lingering remnant of condemnable passion. I had nothing to forgive that man, I have only had to purify that corner of my heart where Evil lurked. However hard it may have been to win that victory, it is won.”

Monsieur de Grandville turned a face to Veronique that was bathed in tears. Human justice seemed at that moment to feel remorse. When the confessing woman raised her head as if to continue, she met the agonizing look of old man Grossetete, who stretched his supplicating hands to her as if to say, “Enough, enough!” At the same instant a sound of tears and sobs was heard. Moved by such sympathy, unable to bear the balm of this general pardon, she was seized with faintness. Seeing that her daughter’s vital force was gone at last, the old mother summoned the vigor of her youth to carry her away.

“Christians,” said the archbishop, “you have heard the confession of that penitent woman; it confirms the sentence of human justice. You ought to see in this fresh reason to join your prayers to those of the Church which offers to God the holy sacrifice of the mass, to implore his mercy in favor of so deep a repentance.”

The services went on. Veronique, lying on the bed, followed them with a look of such inward contentment that she seemed, to every eye, no longer the same woman. On her face was the candid and virtuous expression of the pure young girl such as she had been in her parents’ home. The dawn of eternal life was already whitening her brow and glorifying her face with its celestial tints. Doubtless she heard the mystic harmonies, and gathered strength to live from her desire to unite herself once more with God in the last communion. The rector came beside the bed and gave her absolution. The archbishop administered the sacred oils with a fatherly tenderness that showed to all there present how dear the lost but now recovered lamb had been to him. Then, with the sacred anointing, he closed to the things of earth those eyes which had done such evil, and laid the seal of the Church upon the lips that were once too eloquent. The ears, by which so many evil inspirations had penetrated her mind, were closed forever. All the senses, deadened by repentance, were thus sanctified, and the spirit of evil could have no further power within her soul.

Never did assistants of this ceremony more fully understand the grandeur and profundity of the sacrament than those who now saw the acts of the Church justly following the confession of that dying woman.

Thus prepared, Veronique received the body of Jesus Christ with an expression of hope and joy which melted the ice of unbelief against which the rector had so often bruised himself. Roubaud, confounded in all his opinions, became a Catholic on the spot. The scene was touching and yet awesome; the solemnity of its every feature was so great that painters might have found there the subject of a masterpiece.

When this funeral part was over, and the dying woman heard the priests begin the reading of the gospel of Saint John, she signed to her mother to bring her son, who had been taken from the room by his tutor. When she saw Francis kneeling by the bedside the pardoned mother felt she had the right to lay her hand upon his head and bless him. Doing so, she died.

Old Madame Sauviat was there, at her post, erect as she had been for twenty years. This woman, heroic after her fashion, closed her daughter’s eyes--those eyes that had wept so much--and kissed them. All the priests, followed by the choristers, surrounded the bed. By the flaming light of the torches they chanted the terrible _De Profundis_, the echoes of which told the population kneeling before the chateau, the friends praying in the salon, the servants in the adjoining rooms, that the mother of the canton was dead. The hymn was accompanied with moans and tears. The confession of that grand woman had not been audible beyond the threshold of the salon, and none but loving ears had heard it.

When the peasants of the neighborhood, joining with those of Montegnac, came, one by one, to lay upon their benefactress the customary palm, together with their last farewell mingled with prayers and tears, they saw the man of justice, crushed by grief, holding the hand of the woman whom, without intending it, he had so cruelly but so justly stricken.

Two days later the _procureur-general_, Grossetete, the archbishop, and the mayor, holding the corners of the black pall, conducted the body of Madame Graslin to its last resting-place. It was laid in the grave in deep silence; not a word was said; no one had strength to speak; all eyes were full of tears. “She is now a saint!” was said by the peasants as they went away along the roads of the canton to which she had given prosperity,--saying the words to her creations as though they were animate beings.

No one thought it strange that Madame Graslin was buried beside the body of Jean-Francois Tascheron. She had not asked it; but the old mother, as the last act of her tender pity, had requested the sexton to make the grave there,--putting together those whom earth had so violently parted, and whose souls were now reunited through repentance in purgatory.

Madame Graslin’s will was found to be all that was expected of it. She founded scholarships and hospital beds at Limoges solely for working-men; she assigned a considerable sum--three hundred thousand francs in six years--for the purchase of that part of the village called Les Tascherons, where she directed that a hospital should be built. This hospital, intended for the indigent old persons of the canton, for the sick, for lying-in women if paupers, and for foundlings, was to be called the Tascheron Hospital. Veronique ordered it to be placed in charge of the Gray Sisters, and fixed the salaries of the surgeon and the physician at four thousand francs for each. She requested Roubaud to be the first physician of this hospital, placing upon him the choice of the surgeon, and requesting him to superintend the erection of the building with reference to sanitary arrangements, conjointly with Gerard, who was to be the architect. She also gave to the village of Montegnac an extent of pasture land sufficient to pay all its taxes. The church, she endowed with a fund to be used for a special purpose, namely: watch was to be kept over young workmen, and cases discovered in which some village youth might show a disposition for art, or science, or manufactures; the interest of the fund was then to be used in fostering it. The intelligent benevolence of the testatrix named the sum that should be taken for each of these encouragements.

The news of Madame Graslin’s death, received throughout the department as a calamity, was not accompanied by any rumor injurious to the memory of this woman. This discretion was a homage rendered to so many virtues by the hard-working Catholic population, which renewed in this little corner of France the miracles of the “Lettres Edifiantes.”

Gerard, appointed guardian of Francis Graslin, and obliged, by terms of the will, to reside at the chateau, moved there. But he did not marry Denise Tascheron until three months after Veronique’s death. In her, Francis found a second mother.

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Bianchon, Horace Father Goriot The Atheist’s Mass Cesar Birotteau The Commission in Lunacy Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor’s Establishment The Secrets of a Princess The Government Clerks Pierrette A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life Honorine The Seamy Side of History The Magic Skin A Second Home A Prince of Bohemia Letters of Two Brides The Muse of the Department The Imaginary Mistress The Middle Classes Cousin Betty In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following: Another Study of Woman La Grande Breteche

Brezacs (The) The Government Clerks

Grandville, Vicomte de A Second Home A Daughter of Eve

Grossetete (younger brother of F. Grossetete) The Muse of the Department

Navarreins, Duc de A Bachelor’s Establishment Colonel Chabert The Muse of the Department The Thirteen Jealousies of a Country Town The Peasantry Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life The Magic Skin The Gondreville Mystery The Secrets of a Princess

Rastignac, Monseigneur Gabriel de Father Goriot A Daughter of Eve