"`At nineteen years of age--poor henry!--and his murderers unknown--no, not unknown--if I may trust my presentiments.
"`To preserve my fortune for my son, I had feigned to abjure the Protestant faith.As long as that beloved boy lived, I scrupulously kept up Catholic appearances.The imposture revolted me, but the interest of my son was concerned.
"`When they killed him, this deceit became insupportable to me.I was watched, accused, and condemned as relapsed.My property has been confiscated, and I am sentenced to the galleys.
"'Tis a terrible time we live in! Misery and servitude! sanguinary despotism and religious intolerance! Oh, it is sweet to abandon life!
sweet to rest and see no more such evils and such sorrows!
"`In a few hours, I shall enjoy that rest.I shall die.Let me think of those who will survive--or rather, of those who will live perhaps in better times.
"`Out of all my fortune, there remains to me a sum of fifty thousand crowns, deposited in a friend's hands.
"`I have no longer a son; but I have numerous relations, exiled in various parts of Europe.This sum of fifty thousand crowns, divided between them, would profit each of them very little.I have disposed of it differently.
"`In this I have followed the wise counsels of a man, whom I venerate as the image of God on earth, for his intelligence, wisdom, and goodness are almost divine.
"`Twice in the course of my life have I seen this man, under very fatal circumstances--twice have I owed him safety, once of the soul, once of the body.
"'Alas! he might perhaps have saved my poor child, but he came too late--
too late.
"`Before he left me, he wished to divert me from the intention of dying--
for he knew all.But his voice was powerless.My grief, my regret, my discouragement, were too much for him.
"`It is strange! when he was convinced of my resolution to finish my days by violence, some words of terrible bitterness escaped him, making me believe that he envied me--my fate--my death!
"`Is he perhaps condemned to live?
"`Yes; he has, no doubt, condemned himself to be useful to humanity, and yet life is heavy on him, for I heard him repeat one day, with an expression of despair and weariness that I have never forgotten: "Life!
life! who will deliver me from it?"
"`Is life then so very burdensome to him?
"`He is gone.His last words have made me look for my departure with serenity.Thanks to him, my death shall not be without fruit.
"`Thanks to him, these lines, written at this moment by a man who, in a few hours, will have ceased to live, may perhaps be the parents of great things a century and a half hence--yes! great and noble things, if my last will is piously followed by my descendants, for it is to them that I here address myself.
"`That they may understand and appreciate this last will--which I commend to the care of the unborn, who dwell in the future whither I am hastening--they must know the persecutors of my family and avenge their ancestor, but by a noble vengeance.
"`My grandfather was a Catholic.Induced by perfidious counsels rather than religious zeal, he attached himself, though a layman, to a Society whose power has always been terrible and mysterious--the Society of Jesus--'"
At these words of the testament, Father d'Aigrigny, Rodin, and Gabriel looked involuntarily at each other: The notary, who had not perceived this action, continued to read:
"`After some years, during which he had never ceased to profess the most absolute devotion to this Society, he was suddenly enlightened by fearful revelations as to the secret ends it pursued, and the means it employed.
"`This was in 1510, a month before the assassination of Henry IV.
"`My grandfather, terrified at the secret of which he had become the unwilling depositary, and which was to be fully explained by the death of the best of kings, not only broke with the Society, but, as if Catholicism itself had been answerable for the crimes of its members, he abandoned the Romish religion, in which he had hitherto lived, and became a Protestant.
"`Undeniable proofs, attesting the connivance of two members of the Company with Ravaillac, a connivance also proved in the case of Jean Chatel, the regicide, were in my grandfather's possession.
"'This was the first cause of the violent hatred of the Society for our family.Thank Heaven, these papers have been placed in safety, and if my last will is executed, will be found marked A.M.C.D.G., in the ebony casket in the Hall of Mourning, in the house in the Rue Saint-Francois.
"'My father was also exposed to these secret persecutions.His ruin, and perhaps his death, would have been the consequence, had it not been for the intervention of an angelic woman, towards whom he felt an almost religious veneration.
"`The portrait of this woman, whom I saw a few years ago, as well as that of the man whom I hold in the greatest reverence, were painted by me from memory, and have been placed in the Red Room in the Rue Saint-Francois--
to be gratefully valued, I hope, by the descendants of my family.'"
For some moments Gabriel had become more and more attentive to the reading of this testament.He thought within himself by how strange a coincidence one of his ancestors had, two centuries before, broken with the Society of Jesus, as he himself had just done; and that from this rupture, two centuries old, dated also that species of hatred with which the Society of Jesus had always pursued his family.Nor did the young priest find it less strange that this inheritance, transmitted to him after a lapse of a hundred and fifty years, from one of his kindred (the victim of the Society of Jesus), should return by a voluntary act to the coffers of this same society.When the notary read the passage relative to the two portraits, Gabriel, who, like Father d'Aigrigny, sat with his back towards the pictures, turned round to look at them.Hardly had the missionary cast his eyes on the portrait of the woman, than he uttered a loud cry of surprise, and almost terror.The notary paused in his reading, and looked uneasily at the young priest.
