Chapter XIX: Part 19

When vespers ended he returned to the house of the alcalde, where he was quartered. Giving himself over, a willing prey, to the delights of a success long expected, laboriously sought, his mind at first could dwell on nothing else,--he was still loved. Solitude had nourished the love of that heart, just as his own had thriven on the barriers, successively surmounted, which this woman had placed between herself and him. This ecstasy of the spirit had its natural duration; then came the desire to see this woman, to withdraw her from God, to win her back to himself,--a bold project, welcome to a bold man. After the evening repast, he retired to his room to escape questions and think in peace, and remained plunged in deep meditation throughout the night. He rose early and went to Mass. He placed himself close to the latticed screen, his brow touching the brown curtain. He longed to rend it away; but he was not alone, his host had accompanied him, and the least imprudence might compromise the future of his love and ruin his new-found hopes. The organ was played, but not by the same hand; the musician of the last two days was absent from its key-board. All was chill and pale to the general. Was his mistress worn out by the emotions which had wellnigh broken down his own vigorous heart? Had she so truly shared and comprehended his faithful and eager love that she now lay exhausted and dying in her cell? At the moment when such thoughts as these rose in the general's mind, he heard beside him the voice beloved; he knew the clear ring of its tones. The voice, slightly changed by a tremor which gave it the timid grace and modesty of a young girl, detached itself from the volume of song, like the voice of a prima donna in the harmonies of her final notes. It gave to the ear an impression like the effect to the eye of a fillet of silver or gold threading a dark frieze. It was indeed she! Still Parisian, she had not lost her gracious charm, though she had forsaken the coronet and adornments of the world for the frontlet and serge of a Carmelite. Having revealed her love the night before in the praises addressed to the Lord of all, she seemed now to say to her lover:--"Yes, it is I: I am here. I love forever; yet I am aloof from love. Thou shalt hear me; my soul shall enfold thee; but I must stay beneath the brown shroud of this choir, from which no power can tear me. Thou canst not see me."

"It is she!" whispered the general to himself, as he raised his head and withdrew his hands from his face; for he had not been able to bear erect the storm of feeling that shook his heart as the voice vibrated through the arches and blended with the murmur of the waves. A storm raged without, yet peace was within the sanctuary. The rich voice still caressed the ear, and fell like balm upon the parched heart of the lover; it flowered in the air about him, from which he breathed the emanations of her spirit exhaling her love through the aspirations of its prayer.

The alcalde came to rejoin his guest, and found him bathed in tears at the elevation of the Host which was chanted by the nun. Surprised to find such devotion in a French officer, he invited the confessor of the convent to join them at supper, and informed the general, to whom no news had ever given such pleasure, of what he had done. During the supper the general made the confessor the object of much attention, and thus confirmed the Spaniards in the high opinion they had formed of his piety. He inquired with grave interest the number of the nuns, and asked details about the revenues of the convent and its wealth, with the air of a man who politely wished to choose topics which occupied the mind of the good old priest. Then he inquired about the life led by the sisters. Could they go out? Could they see friends?

"Senhor," said the venorable priest, "the rule is severe. If the permission of our Holy Father must be obtained before a woman can enter a house of Saint Bruno [the Chartreux] the like rule exists here. It is impossible for any man to enter a convent of the Bare-footed Carmelites, unless he is a priest delegated by the archbishop for duty in the House. No nun can go out. It is true, however, that the Great Saint, Mother Theresa, did frequently leave her cell. A Mother-superior can alone, under authority of the archbishop, permit a nun to see her friends, especially in case of illness. As this convent is one of the chief Houses of the Order, it has a Mother-superior residing in it. We have several foreigners,--among them a Frenchwoman, Sister Theresa, the one who directs the music in the chapel."

"Ah!" said the general, feigning surprise: "she must have been gratified by the triumph of the House of Bourbon?"

"I told them the object of the Mass; they are always rather curious."

"Perhaps Sister Theresa has some interests in France; she might be glad to receive some news, or ask some questions?"

"I think not; or she would have spoken to me."

"As a compatriot," said the general, "I should be curious to see--that is, if it were possible, if the superior would consent, if--"

"At the grating, even in the presence of the reverend Mother, an interview would be absolutely impossible for any ordinary man, no matter who he was; but in favor of a liberator of a Catholic throne and our holy religion, possibly, in spite of the rigid rule of our Mother Theresa, the rule might be relaxed," said the confessor. "I will speak about it."

"How old is Sister Theresa?" asked the lover, who dared not question the priest about the beauty of the nun.

"She is no longer of any age," said the good old man, with a simplicity which made the general shudder.

III

The next day, before the _siesta_, the confessor came to tell the general that Sister Theresa and the Mother-superior consented to receive him at the grating that evening before the hour of vespers. After the _siesta_, during which the Frenchman had whiled away the time by walking round the port in the fierce heat of the sun, the priest came to show him the way into the convent.

He was guided through a gallery which ran the length of the cemetery, where fountains and trees and numerous arcades gave a cool freshness in keeping with that still and silent spot. When they reached the end of this long gallery, the priest led his companion into a parlor, divided in the middle by a grating covered with a brown curtain. On the side which we must call public, and where the confessor left the general, there was a wooden bench along one side of the wall; some chairs, also of wood, were near the grating. The ceiling was of wood, crossed by heavy beams of the evergreen oak, without ornament. Daylight came from two windows in the division set apart for the nuns, and was absorbed by the brown tones of the room; so that it barely showed the picture of the great black Christ, and those of Saint Theresa and the Blessed Virgin, which hung on the dark panels of the walls.

The feelings of the general turned, in spite of their violence, to a tone of melancholy. He grew calm in these calm precincts. Something mighty as the grave seized him beneath these chilling rafters. Was it not the eternal silence, the deep peace, the near presence of the infinite? Through the stillness came the fixed thought of the cloister,--that thought which glides through the air in the half-lights, and is in all things,--the thought unchangeable; nowhere seen, which yet grows vast to the imagination; the all-comprising phrase, _the peace of God_. It enters there, with living power, into the least religious heart. Convents of men are not easily conceivable; man seems feeble and unmanly in them. He is born to act, to fulfil a life of toil; and he escapes it in his cell. But in a monastery of women what strength to endure, and yet what touching weakness! A man may be pushed by a thousand sentiments into the depths of an abbey; he flings himself into them as from a precipice. But the woman is drawn only by one feeling; she does not unsex herself,--she espouses holiness. You may say to the man, Why did you not struggle? but to the cloistered woman life is a struggle still.

The general found in this mute parlor of the seagirt convent memories of himself. Love seldom reaches upward to solemnity; but love in the bosom of God,--is there nothing solemn there? Yes, more than a man has the right to hope for in this nineteenth century, with our manners and our customs what they are.

The general's soul was one on which such impressions act. His nature was noble enough to forget self-interest, honors, Spain, the world, or Paris, and rise to the heights of feeling roused by this unspeakable termination of his long pursuit. What could be more tragic? How many emotions held these lovers, reunited at last on this granite ledge far out at sea, yet separated by an idea, an impassable barrier. Look at this man, saying to himself, "Can I triumph over God in that heart?"

A slight noise made him quiver. The brown curtain was drawn back; he saw in the half-light a woman standing, but her face was hidden from him by the projection of a veil, which lay in many folds upon her head. According to the rule of the Order she was clothed in the brown garb whose color has become proverbial. The general could not see the naked feet, which would have told him the frightful emaciation of her body; yet through the thick folds of the coarse robe that swathed her, his heart divined that tears and prayers and passion and solitude had wasted her away.

The chill hand of a woman, doubtless the Mother-superior, held back the curtain, and the general, examining this unwelcome witness of the interview, encountered the deep grave eyes of an old nun, very aged, whose clear, even youthful, glance belied the wrinkles that furrowed her pale face.

"Madame la duchesse," he said, in a voice shaken by emotion, to the Sister, who bowed her head, "does your companion understand French?"

"There is no duchess here," replied the nun. "You are in presence of Sister Theresa. The woman whom you call my companion is my Mother in God, my superior here below."

These words, humbly uttered by a voice that once harmonized with the luxury and elegance in which this woman had lived queen of the world of Paris, that fell from lips whose language had been of old so gay, so mocking, struck the general as if with an electric shock.

"My holy Mother speaks only Latin and Spanish," she added.

"I understand neither. Dear Antoinette, make her my excuses."

As she heard her name softly uttered by a man once so hard to her, the nun was shaken by emotion, betrayed only by the light quivering of her veil, on which the light now fully fell.

"My brother," she said, passing her sleeve beneath her veil, perhaps to wipe her eyes, "my name is Sister Theresa."

Then she turned to the Mother, and said to her in Spanish a few words which the general plainly heard. He knew enough of the language to understand it, perhaps to speak it. "My dear Mother, this gentleman presents to you his respects, and begs you to excuse him for not laying them himself at your feet; but he knows neither of the languages which you speak."

The old woman slowly bowed her head; her countenance took an expression of angelic sweetness, tempered, nevertheless, by the consciousness of her power and dignity.

"You know this gentleman?" she asked, with a piercing glance at the Sister.

"Yes, my Mother."

"Retire to your cell, my daughter," said the Superior in a tone of authority.

The general hastily withdrew to the shelter of the curtain, lest his face should betray the anguish these words cost him; but he fancied that the penetrating eyes of the Superior followed him even into the shadow. This woman, arbiter of the frail and fleeting joy he had won at such cost, made him afraid; he trembled, he whom a triple range of cannon could not shake.

The duchess walked to the door, but there she turned. "My Mother," she said, in a voice horribly calm, "this Frenchman is one of my brothers."

"Remain, therefore, my daughter," said the old woman, after a pause.

The jesuitism of this answer revealed such love and such regret, that a man of less firmness than the general would have betrayed his joy in the midst of a peril so novel to him. But what value could there be in the words, looks, gestures of a love that must be hidden from the eyes of a lynx, the claws of a tiger? The Sister came back.

"You see, my brother," she said, "what I have dared to do that I might for one moment speak to you of your salvation, and tell you of the prayers which day by day my soul offers to heaven on your behalf. I have committed a mortal sin,--I have lied. How many days of penitence to wash out that lie! But I shall suffer for you. You know not, my brother, the joy of loving in heaven, of daring to avow affections that religion has purified, that have risen to the highest regions, that at last we know and feel with the soul alone. If the doctrines--if the spirit of the saint to whom we owe this refuge had not lifted me above the anguish of earth to a world, not indeed where she is, but far above my lower life, I could not have seen you now. But I can see you, I can hear you, and remain calm."

"Antoinette," said the general, interrupting these words, "suffer me to see you--you, whom I love passionately, to madness, as you once would have had me love you."

"Do not call me Antoinette, I implore you: memories of the past do me harm. See in me only the Sister Theresa, a creature trusting all to the divine pity. And," she added, after a pause, "subdue yourself, my brother. Our Mother would separate us instantly if your face betrayed earthly passions, or your eyes shed tears."

The general bowed his head, as if to collect himself; when he again lifted his eyes to the grating he saw between two bars the pale, emaciated, but still ardent face of the nun. Her complexion, where once had bloomed the loveliness of youth,--where once there shone the happy contrast of a pure, clear whiteness with the colors of a Bengal rose,--now had the tints of a porcelain cup through which a feeble light showed faintly. The beautiful hair of which this woman was once so proud was shaven; a white band bound her brows and was wrapped around her face. Her eyes, circled with dark shadows due to the austerities of her life, glanced at moments with a feverish light, of which their habitual calm was but the mask. In a word, of this woman nothing remained but her soul.

"Ah! you will leave this tomb--you, who are my life! You belonged to me; you were not free to give yourself--not even to God. Did you not promise to sacrifice all to the least of my commands? Will you now think me worthy to claim that promise, if I tell you what I have done for your sake? I have sought you through the whole world. For five years you have been the thought of every instant, the occupation of every hour, of my life. My friends--friends all-powerful as you know--have helped me to search the convents of France, Spain, Italy, Sicily, America. My love has deepened with every fruitless search. Many a long journey I have taken on a false hope. I have spent my life and the strong beatings of my heart about the walls of cloisters. I will not speak to you of a fidelity unlimited. What is it?--nothing compared to the infinitude of my love! If in other days your remorse was real, you cannot hesitate to follow me now."

"You forget that I am not free."

"The duke is dead," he said hastily.

Sister Theresa colored. "May Heaven receive him!" she said, with quick emotion: "he was generous to me. But I did not speak of those ties: one of my faults was my willingness to break them without scruple for you."

"You speak of your vows," cried the general, frowning. "I little thought that anything would weigh in your heart against our love. But do not fear, Antoinette; I will obtain a brief from the Holy Father which will absolve your vows. I will go to Rome; I will petition every earthly power; if God himself came down from heaven I--"

"Do not blaspheme!"

"Do not fear how God would see it! Ah! I wish I were as sure that you will leave these walls with me; that to-night--to-night, you would embark at the feet of these rocks. Let us go to find happiness! I know not where--at the ends of the earth! With me you will come back to life, to health--in the shelter of my love!"

"Do not say these things," replied the Sister; "you do not know what you now are to me. I love you better than I once loved you. I pray to God for you daily. I see you no longer with the eyes of my body. If you but knew, Armand, the joy of being able, without shame, to spend myself upon a pure love which God protects! You do not know the joy I have in calling down the blessings of heaven upon your head. I never pray for myself: God will do with me according to his will. But you--at the price of my eternity I would win the assurance that you are happy in this world, that you will be happy in another throughout the ages. My life eternal is all that misfortunes have left me to give you. I have grown old in grief; I am no longer young or beautiful. Ah! you would despise a nun who returned to be a woman; no sentiment, not even maternal love, could absolve her. What could you say to me that would shake the unnumbered reflections my heart has made in five long years,--and which have changed it, hollowed it, withered it? Ah! I should have given something less sad to God!"

"What can I say to you, dear Antoinette? I will say that I love you; that affection, love, true love, the joy of living in a heart all ours,--wholly ours, without one reservation,--is so rare, so difficult to find, that I once doubted you; I put you to cruel tests. But to-day I love and trust you with all the powers of my soul. If you will follow me I will listen throughout life to no voice but thine. I will look on no face--"

"Silence, Armand! you shorten the sole moments which are given to us to see each other here below."

"Antoinette! will you follow me?"

"I never leave you. I live in your heart--but with another power than that of earthly pleasure, or vanity, or selfish joy. I live here for you, pale and faded, in the bosom of God. If God is just, you will be happy."

"Phrases! you give me phrases! But if I will to have you pale and faded,--if I cannot be happy unless you are with me? What! will you forever place duties before my love? Shall I never be above all things else in your heart? In the past you put the world, or self--I know not what--above me; to-day it is God, it is my salvation. In this Sister Theresa I recognize the duchess; ignorant of the joys of love, unfeeling beneath a pretense of tenderness! You do not love me! you never loved me!--"

"Oh, my brother!--"

"You will not leave this tomb. You love my soul, you say: well! you shall destroy it forever and ever. I will kill myself--"

"My Mother!" cried the nun, "I have lied to you; this man is my lover."

The curtain fell. The general, stunned, heard the doors close with violence.

"She loves me still!" he cried, comprehending all that was revealed in the cry of the nun. "I will find means to carry her away!"

He left the island immediately, and returned to France.

Translation copyrighted by Roberts Brothers.

'AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR'

On the 22d of January, 1793, towards eight o'clock in the evening, an old gentlewoman came down the sharp declivity of the Faubourg Saint-Martin, which ends near the church of Saint-Laurent in Paris. Snow had fallen throughout the day, so that footfalls could be scarcely heard. The streets were deserted. The natural fear inspired by such stillness was deepened by the terror to which all France was then a prey.

The old lady had met no one. Her failing sight hindered her from perceiving in the distance a few pedestrians, sparsely scattered like shadows, along the broad road of the faubourg. She was walking bravely through the solitude as if her age were a talisman to guard her from danger; but after passing the Rue des Morts she fancied that she heard the firm, heavy tread of a man coming behind her. The thought seized her mind that she had been listening to it unconsciously for some time. Terrified at the idea of being followed, she tried to walk faster to reach a lighted shop-window, and settle the doubt which thus assailed her. When well beyond the horizontal rays of light thrown across the pavement, she turned abruptly and saw a human form looming through the fog. The indistinct glimpse was enough. She staggered for an instant under the weight of terror, for she no longer doubted that this unknown man had tracked her, step by step, from her home. The hope of escaping such a spy lent strength to her feeble limbs. Incapable of reasoning, she quickened her steps to a run, as if it were possible to escape a man necessarily more agile than she. After running for a few minutes, she reached the shop of a pastry-cook, entered it, and fell, rather than sat, down on a chair which stood before the counter.

As she lifted the creaking latch of the door, a young woman, who was at work on a piece of embroidery, looked up and recognized through the glass panes the antiquated mantle of purple silk which wrapped the old lady, and hastened to pull open a drawer, as if to take from thence something that she had to give her. The action and the expression of the young woman not only implied a wish to get rid of the stranger, as of some one most unwelcome, but she let fall an exclamation of impatience at finding the drawer empty. Then, without looking at the lady, she came rapidly from behind the counter, and went towards the back-shop to call her husband, who appeared at once.

"Where have you put ---- ----?" she asked him, mysteriously, calling his attention to the old lady by a glance, and not concluding her sentence.

Although the pastry-cook could see nothing but the enormous black-silk hood circled with purple ribbons which the stranger wore, he disappeared, with a glance at his wife which seemed to say, "Do you suppose I should leave _that_ on your counter?"

Surprised at the silence and immobility of her customer, the wife came forward, and was seized with a sudden movement of compassion as well as of curiosity when she looked at her. Though the complexion of the old gentlewoman was naturally livid, like that of a person vowed to secret austerities, it was easy to see that some recent alarm had spread an unusual paleness over her features. Her head-covering was so arranged as to hide the hair, whitened no doubt by age, for the cleanly collar of her dress proved that she wore no powder. The concealment of this natural adornment gave to her countenance a sort of conventual severity; but its features were grave and noble. In former days the habits and manners of people of quality were so different from those of all other classes that it was easy to distinguish persons of noble birth. The young shop-woman felt certain, therefore, that the stranger was a _ci-devant_, and one who had probably belonged to the court.

"Madame?" she said, with involuntary respect, forgetting that the title was proscribed.

The old lady made no answer. Her eyes were fixed on the glass of the shop-window, as if some alarming object were painted upon it.

"What is the matter, _citoyenne_?" asked the master of the establishment, re-entering, and drawing the attention of his customer to a little cardboard box covered with blue paper, which he held out to her.

"It is nothing, nothing, my friends," she answered in a gentle voice, as she raised her eyes to give the man a thankful look. Seeing a phrygian cap upon his head, a cry escaped her:--"Ah! it is you who have betrayed me!"

The young woman and her husband replied by a deprecating gesture of horror which caused the unknown lady to blush, either for her harsh suspicion or from the relief of feeling it unjust.

"Excuse me," she said, with childlike sweetness. Then taking a gold _louis_ from her pocket, she offered it to the pastry-cook. "Here is the sum we agreed upon," she added.

There is a poverty which poor people quickly divine. The shopkeeper and his wife looked at each other with a glance at the old lady that conveyed a mutual thought. The _louis_ was doubtless her last. The hands of the poor woman trembled as she offered it, and her eyes rested upon it sadly, yet not with avarice. She seemed to feel the full extent of her sacrifice. Hunger and want were traced upon her features in lines as legible as those of timidity and ascetic habits. Her clothing showed vestiges of luxury. It was of silk, well-worn; the mantle was clean, though faded; the laces carefully darned; in short, here were the rags of opulence. The two shopkeepers, divided between pity and self-interest, began to soothe their conscience with words:--

"_Citoyenne_, you seem very feeble--"

"Would Madame like to take something?" asked the wife, cutting short her husband's speech.

"We have some very good broth," he added.

"It is so cold, perhaps Madame is chilled by her walk; but you can rest here and warm yourself."

"The devil is not so black as he is painted," cried the husband.

Won by the kind tone of these words, the old lady admitted that she had been followed by a man and was afraid of going home alone.

"Is that all?" said the man with the phrygian cap. "Wait for me, _citoyenne_."

He gave the _louis_ to his wife. Then moved by a species of gratitude which slips into the shopkeeping soul when its owner receives an exorbitant price for an article of little value, he went to put on his uniform as a National guard, took his hat, slung on his sabre, and reappeared under arms. But the wife meantime had reflected. Reflection, as often happens in many hearts, had closed the open hand of her benevolence. Uneasy, and alarmed lest her husband should be mixed up in some dangerous affair, she pulled him by the flap of his coat, intending to stop him; but the worthy man, obeying the impulse of charity, promptly offered to escort the poor lady to her home.

"It seems that the man who has given her this fright is prowling outside," said his wife nervously.

"I am afraid he is," said the old lady, with much simplicity.

"Suppose he should be a spy. Perhaps it is a conspiracy. Don't go. Take back the box." These words, whispered in the pastry-cook's ear by the wife of his bosom, chilled the sudden compassion that had warmed him.

"Well, well, I will just say two words to the man and get rid of him," he said, opening the door and hurrying out.

The old gentlewoman, passive as a child and half paralyzed with fear, sat down again. The shopkeeper almost instantly reappeared; but his face, red by nature and still further scorched by the fires of his bakery, had suddenly turned pale, and he was in the grasp of such terror that his legs shook and his eyes were like those of a drunken man.

"Miserable aristocrat!" he cried, furiously, "do you want to cut off our heads? Go out from here; let me see your heels, and don't dare to come back; don't expect me to supply you with the means of conspiracy!"

So saying, the pastry-cook endeavored to get back the little box which the old lady had already slipped into one of her pockets. Hardly had the bold hands of the shopkeeper touched her clothing, than, preferring to encounter danger with no protection but that of God rather than lose the thing she had come to buy, she recovered the agility of youth, and sprang to the door, through which she disappeared abruptly, leaving the husband and wife amazed and trembling.

As soon as the poor lady found herself alone in the street she began to walk rapidly; but her strength soon gave way, for she once more heard the snow creaking under the footsteps of the spy as he trod heavily upon it. She was obliged to stop short: the man stopped also. She dared not speak to him, nor even look at him; either because of her terror, or from some lack of natural intelligence. Presently she continued her walk slowly; the man measured his step by hers, and kept at the same distance behind her; he seemed to move like her shadow. Nine o'clock struck as the silent couple repassed the church of Saint-Laurent. It is the nature of all souls, even the weakest, to fall back into quietude after moments of violent agitation; for manifold as our feelings may be, our bodily powers are limited. Thus the old lady, receiving no injury from her apparent persecutor, began to think that he might be a secret friend watching to protect her. She gathered up in her mind the circumstances attending other apparitions of the mysterious stranger as if to find plausible grounds for this consoling opinion, and took pleasure in crediting him with good rather than sinister intentions. Forgetting the terror he had inspired in the pastry-cook, she walked on with a firmer step towards the upper part of the Faubourg Saint-Martin.

At the end of half an hour she reached a house standing close to the junction of the chief street of the faubourg with the street leading out to the Barrière de Pantin. The place is to this day one of the loneliest in Paris. The north wind blowing from Belleville and the Buttes Chaumont whistled among the houses, or rather cottages, scattered through the sparsely inhabited little valley, where the inclosures are fenced with walls built of mud and refuse bones. This dismal region seems the natural home of poverty and despair. The man who was intent on following the poor creature who had had the courage to thread these dark and silent streets seemed struck with the spectacle they offered. He stopped as if reflecting, and stood in a hesitating attitude, dimly visible by a street lantern whose flickering light scarcely pierced the fog. Fear gave eyes to the old gentlewoman, who now fancied that she saw something sinister in the features of this unknown man. All her terrors revived, and profiting by the curious hesitation that had seized him, she glided like a shadow to the doorway of the solitary dwelling, touched a spring, and disappeared with phantasmagoric rapidity.

The man, standing motionless, gazed at the house, which was, as it were, a type of the wretched buildings of the neighborhood. The tottering hovel, built of porous stone in rough blocks, was coated with yellow plaster much cracked, and looked ready to fall before a gust of wind. The roof, of brown tiles covered with moss, had sunk in several places, and gave the impression that the weight of snow might break it down at any moment. Each story had three windows whose frames, rotted by dampness and shrunken by the heat of the sun, told that the outer cold penetrated to the chambers. The lonely house seemed like an ancient tower that time had forgotten to destroy. A faint light gleamed from the garret windows, which were irregularly cut in the roof; but the rest of the house was in complete obscurity. The old woman went up the rough and clumsy stairs with difficulty, holding fast to a rope which took the place of baluster. She knocked furtively at the door of a lodging under the roof, and sat hastily down on a chair which an old man offered her.

"Hide! hide yourself!" she cried. "Though we go out so seldom, our errands are known, our steps are watched--"

"What has happened?" asked another old woman sitting near the fire.

"The man who has hung about the house since yesterday followed me to-night."

At these words the occupants of the hovel looked at each other with terror in their faces. The old man was the least moved of the three, possibly because he was the one in greatest danger. Under the pressure of misfortune or the yoke of persecution a man of courage begins, as it were, by preparing for the sacrifice of himself: he looks upon his days as so many victories won from fate. The eyes of the two women, fixed upon the old man, showed plainly that he alone was the object of their extreme anxiety.

"Why distrust God, my sisters?" he said, in a hollow but impressive voice. "We chanted praises to his name amid the cries of victims and assassins at the convent. If it pleased him to save me from that butchery, it was doubtless for some destiny which I shall accept without a murmur. God protects his own, and disposes of them according to his will. It is of you, not of me, that we should think."

"No," said one of the women: "what is our life in comparison with that of a priest?"

"Ever since the day when I found myself outside of the Abbaye des Chelles," said the nun beside the fire, "I have given myself up for dead."

"Here," said the one who had just come in, holding out the little box to the priest, "here are the sacramental wafers--Listen!" she cried, interrupting herself. "I hear some one on the stairs."

At these words all three listened intently. The noise ceased.

"Do not be frightened," said the priest, "even if some one asks to enter. A person on whose fidelity we can safely rely has taken measures to cross the frontier, and he will soon call here for letters which I have written to the Duc de Langeais and the Marquis de Beauséant, advising them as to the measures they must take to get you out of this dreadful country, and save you from the misery or the death you would otherwise undergo here."

"Shall you not follow us?" said the two nuns softly, but in a tone of despair.

"My place is near the victims," said the priest, simply.

The nuns were silent, looking at him with devout admiration.

"Sister Martha," he said, addressing the nun who had fetched the wafers, "this messenger must answer '_Fiat voluntas_' to the word '_Hosanna_.'"

"There is some one on the stairway," exclaimed the other nun, hastily opening a hiding-place burrowed at the edge of the roof.

This time it was easy to hear the steps of a man sounding through the deep silence on the rough stairs, which were caked with patches of hardened mud. The priest slid with difficulty into a narrow hiding-place, and the nuns hastily threw articles of apparel over him.

"You can shut me in, Sister Agatha," he said, in a smothered voice.

He was scarcely hidden when three knocks upon the door made the sisters tremble and consult each other with their eyes, for they dared not speak. Forty years' separation from the world had made them like plants of a hot-house which wilt when brought into the outer air. Accustomed to the life of a convent, they could not conceive of any other; and when one morning their bars and gratings were flung down, they had shuddered at finding themselves free. It is easy to imagine the species of imbecility which the events of the Revolution, enacted before their eyes, had produced in these innocent souls. Quite incapable of harmonizing their conventual ideas with the exigencies of ordinary life, not even comprehending their own situation, they were like children who had always been cared for, and who now, torn from their maternal providence, had taken to prayers as other children take to tears. So it happened that in presence of immediate danger they were dumb and passive, and could think of no other defence than Christian resignation.

The man who sought to enter interpreted their silence as he pleased; he suddenly opened the door and showed himself. The two nuns trembled when they recognized the individual who for some days had watched the house and seemed to make inquiries about its inmates. They stood quite still and looked at him with uneasy curiosity, like the children of savages examining a being of another sphere. The stranger was very tall and stout, but nothing in his manner or appearance denoted that he was a bad man. He copied the immobility of the sisters and stood motionless, letting his eye rove slowly round the room.

Two bundles of straw placed on two planks served as beds for the nuns. A table was in the middle of the room; upon it a copper candlestick, a few plates, three knives, and a round loaf of bread. The fire on the hearth was very low, and a few sticks of wood piled in a corner of the room testified to the poverty of the occupants. The walls, once covered with a coat of paint now much defaced, showed the wretched condition of the roof through which the rain had trickled, making a network of brown stains. A sacred relic, saved no doubt from the pillage of the Abbaye des Chelles, adorned the mantel-shelf of the chimney. Three chairs, two coffers, and a broken chest of drawers completed the furniture of the room. A doorway cut near the fireplace showed there was probably an inner chamber.

The inventory of this poor cell was soon made by the individual who had presented himself under such alarming auspices. An expression of pity crossed his features, and as he threw a kind glance upon the frightened women he seemed as much embarrassed as they. The strange silence in which they all three stood and faced each other lasted but a moment; for the stranger seemed to guess the moral weakness and inexperience of the poor helpless creatures, and he said, in a voice which he strove to render gentle, "I have not come as an enemy, _citoyennes_."

Then he paused, but resumed:--"My sisters, if harm should ever happen to you, be sure that I shall not have contributed to it. I have come to ask a favor of you."

They still kept silence.

"If I ask too much--if I annoy you--I will go away; but believe me, I am heartily devoted to you, and if there is any service that I could render you, you may employ me without fear. I, and I alone, perhaps, am above law--since there is no longer a king."

The ring of truth in these words induced Sister Agatha, a nun belonging to the ducal house of Langeais, and whose manners indicated that she had once lived amid the festivities of life and breathed the air of courts, to point to a chair as if she asked their guest to be seated. The unknown gave vent to an expression of joy, mingled with melancholy, as he understood this gesture. He waited respectfully till the sisters were seated, and then obeyed it.

"You have given shelter," he said, "to a venerable priest not sworn in by the Republic, who escaped miraculously from the massacre at the Convent of the Carmelites."

"_Hosanna_," said Sister Agatha, suddenly interrupting the stranger, and looking at him with anxious curiosity.

"That is not his name, I think," he answered.

"But, Monsieur, we have no priest here," cried Sister Martha, hastily, "and--"

"Then you should take better precautions," said the unknown gently, stretching his arm to the table and picking up a breviary. "I do not think you understand Latin, and--"

He stopped short, for the extreme distress painted on the faces of the poor nuns made him fear he had gone too far; they trembled violently, and their eyes filled with tears.

"Do not fear," he said; "I know the name of your guest, and yours also. During the last three days I have learned your poverty, and your great devotion to the venerable Abbé of--"

"Hush!" exclaimed Sister Agatha, ingenuously putting a finger on her lip.

"You see, my sisters, that if I had the horrible design of betraying you, I might have accomplished it again and again."

As he uttered these words the priest emerged from his prison and appeared in the middle of the room.

"I cannot believe, Monsieur," he said courteously, "that you are one of our persecutors. I trust you. What is it you desire of me?"

The saintly confidence of the old man, and the nobility of mind imprinted on his countenance, might have disarmed even an assassin. He who thus mysteriously agitated this home of penury and resignation stood contemplating the group before him; then he addressed the priest in a trustful tone, with these words:--

"My father, I came to ask you to celebrate a mass for the repose of the soul--of--of a sacred being whose body can never lie in holy ground."

The priest involuntarily shuddered. The nuns, not as yet understanding who it was of whom the unknown man had spoken, stood with their necks stretched and their faces turned towards the speakers, in an attitude of eager curiosity. The ecclesiastic looked intently at the stranger; unequivocal anxiety was marked on every feature, and his eyes offered an earnest and even ardent prayer.

"Yes," said the priest at length. "Return here at midnight, and I shall be ready to celebrate the only funeral service that we are able to offer in expiation of the crime of which you speak."

The unknown shivered; a joy both sweet and solemn seemed to rise in his soul above some secret grief. Respectfully saluting the priest and the two saintly women, he disappeared with a mute gratitude which these generous souls knew well how to interpret.

Two hours later the stranger returned, knocked cautiously at the door of the garret, and was admitted by Mademoiselle de Langeais, who led him to the inner chamber of the humble refuge, where all was in readiness for the ceremony. Between two flues of the chimney the nuns had placed the old chest of drawers, whose broken edges were concealed by a magnificent altar-cloth of green moiré. A large ebony and ivory crucifix hanging on the discolored wall stood out in strong relief from the surrounding bareness, and necessarily caught the eye. Four slender little tapers, which the sisters had contrived to fasten to the altar with sealing-wax, threw a pale glimmer dimly reflected by the yellow wall. These feeble rays scarcely lit up the rest of the chamber, but as their light fell upon the sacred objects it seemed a halo falling from heaven upon the bare and undecorated altar.

The floor was damp. The attic roof, which sloped sharply on both sides of the room, was full of chinks through which the wind penetrated. Nothing could be less stately, yet nothing was ever more solemn than this lugubrious ceremony. Silence so deep that some far-distant cry could have pierced it, lent a sombre majesty to the nocturnal scene. The grandeur of the occasion contrasted vividly with the poverty of its circumstances, and roused a feeling of religious terror. On either side of the altar the old nuns, kneeling on the tiled floor and taking no thought of its mortal dampness, were praying in concert with the priest, who, robed in his pontifical vestments, placed upon the altar a golden chalice incrusted with precious stones,--a sacred vessel rescued, no doubt, from the pillage of the Abbaye des Chelles. Close to this vase, which was a gift of royal munificence, the bread and wine of the consecrated sacrifice were contained in two glass tumblers scarcely worthy of the meanest tavern. In default of a missal the priest had placed his breviary on a corner of the altar. A common earthenware platter was provided for the washing of those innocent hands, pure and unspotted with blood. All was majestic and yet paltry; poor but noble; profane and holy in one.

The unknown man knelt piously between the sisters. Suddenly, as he caught sight of the crape upon the chalice and the crucifix,--for in default of other means of proclaiming the object of this funeral rite the priest had put God himself into mourning,--the mysterious visitant was seized by some all-powerful recollection, and drops of sweat gathered on his brow. The four silent actors in this scene looked at each other with mysterious sympathy; their souls, acting one upon another, communicated to each the feelings of all, blending them into the one emotion of religious pity. It seemed as though their thought had evoked from the dead the sacred martyr whose body was devoured by quicklime, but whose shade rose up before them in royal majesty. They were celebrating a funeral Mass without the remains of the deceased. Beneath these rafters and disjointed laths four Christian souls were interceding with God for a king of France, and making his burial without a coffin. It was the purest of all devotions; an act of wonderful loyalty accomplished without one thought of self. Doubtless in the eyes of God it was the cup of cold water that weighed in the balance against many virtues. The whole of monarchy was there in the prayers of the priest and the two poor women; but also it may have been that the Revolution was present likewise, in the person of the strange being whose face betrayed the remorse that led him to make this solemn offering of a vast repentance.

Instead of pronouncing the Latin words, "Introibo ad altare Dei" etc., the priest, with divine intuition, glanced at his three assistants, who represented all Christian France, and said, in words which effaced the penury and meanness of the hovel, "We enter now into the sanctuary of God."

At these words, uttered with penetrating unction, a solemn awe seized the participants. Beneath the dome of St. Peter's in Rome, God had never seemed more majestic to man than he did now in this refuge of poverty and to the eyes of these Christians,--so true is it that between man and God all mediation is unneeded, for his glory descends from himself alone. The fervent piety of the nameless man was unfeigned, and the feeling that held these four servants of God and the king was unanimous. The sacred words echoed like celestial music amid the silence. There was a moment when the unknown broke down and wept: it was at the Pater Noster, to which the priest added a Latin clause which the stranger doubtless comprehended and applied,--"Et remitte scelus regicidis sicut Ludovicus eis remisit semetipse" (And forgive the regicides even as Louis XVI. himself forgave them). The two nuns saw the tears coursing down the manly cheeks of their visitant, and dropping fast on the tiled floor.

The Office of the Dead was recited. The "Domine salvum fac regem," sung in low tones, touched the hearts of these faithful royalists as they thought of the infant king, now captive in the hands of his enemies, for whom this prayer was offered. The unknown shuddered; perhaps he feared an impending crime in which he would be called to take an unwilling part.

When the service was over, the priest made a sign to the nuns, who withdrew to the outer room. As soon as he was alone with the unknown, the old man went up to him with gentle sadness of manner, and said in the tone of a father,--

"My son, if you have steeped your hands in the blood of the martyr king, confess yourself to me. There is no crime which, in the eyes of God, is not washed out by a repentance as deep and sincere as yours appears to be."

At the first words of the ecclesiastic an involuntary motion of terror escaped the stranger; but he quickly recovered himself, and looked at the astonished priest with calm assurance.

"My father," he said, in a voice that nevertheless trembled, "no one is more innocent than I of the blood shed--"

"I believe it!" said the priest.

He paused a moment, during which he examined afresh his penitent; then, persisting in the belief that he was one of those timid members of the Assembly who sacrificed the inviolate and sacred head to save their own, he resumed in a grave voice:--

"Reflect, my son, that something more than taking no part in that great crime is needed to absolve from guilt. Those who kept their sword in the scabbard when they might have defended their king have a heavy account to render to the King of kings. Oh, yes," added the venerable man, moving his head from right to left with an expressive motion; "yes, heavy, indeed! for, standing idle, they made themselves the accomplices of a horrible transgression."

"Do you believe," asked the stranger, in a surprised tone, "that even an indirect participation will be punished? The soldier ordered to form the line--do you think he was guilty?"

The priest hesitated. Glad of the dilemma that placed this puritan of royalty between the dogma of passive obedience, which according to the partisans of monarchy should dominate the military system, and the other dogma, equally imperative, which consecrates the person of the king, the stranger hastened to accept the hesitation of the priest as a solution of the doubts that seemed to trouble him. Then, so as not to allow the old Jansenist time for further reflection, he said quickly:--

"I should blush to offer you any fee whatever in acknowledgment of the funeral service you have just celebrated for the repose of the king's soul and for the discharge of my conscience. We can only pay for inestimable things by offerings which are likewise beyond all price. Deign to accept, Monsieur, the gift which I now make to you of a holy relic; the day may come when you will know its value."

As he said these words he gave the ecclesiastic a little box of light weight. The priest took it as it were involuntarily; for the solemn tone in which the words were uttered, and the awe with which the stranger held the box, struck him with fresh amazement. They re-entered the outer room, where the two nuns were waiting for them.

"You are living," said the unknown, "in a house whose owner, Mucius Scaevola, the plasterer who lives on the first floor, is noted in the Section for his patriotism. He is, however, secretly attached to the Bourbons. He was formerly huntsman to Monseigneur the Prince de Conti, to whom he owes everything. As long as you stay in this house you are in greater safety than you can be in any other part of France. Remain here. Pious souls will watch over you and supply your wants; and you can await without danger the coming of better days. A year hence, on the 21st of January" (as he uttered these last words he could not repress an involuntary shudder), "I shall return to celebrate once more the Mass of expiation--"

He could not end the sentence. Bowing to the silent occupants of the garret, he cast a last look upon the signs of their poverty and disappeared.

To the two simple-minded women this event had all the interest of a romance. As soon as the venerable abbé told them of the mysterious gift so solemnly offered by the stranger, they placed the box upon the table, and the three anxious faces, faintly lighted by a tallow-candle, betrayed an indescribable curiosity. Mademoiselle de Langeais opened the box and took from it a handkerchief of extreme fineness, stained with sweat. As she unfolded it they saw dark stains.

"That is blood!" exclaimed the priest.

"It is marked with the royal crown!" cried the other nun.