I gave her the story of the accident in a few words, without laying too much stress on some too harrowing details.I told her about our first day's journey, and how it had been filled with recollections of her and of love.And she listened eagerly, without shedding a tear, leaning her face towards me, as some zealous doctor might lean to watch any change in a patient's face.When she seemed to me to have opened her whole heart to pain, to be deliberately plunging herself into misery with the first delirious frenzy of despair, I caught at my opportunity, and told her of the fears that troubled the poor dying man, told her how and why it was that he had given me this fatal message.
Then her tears were dried by the fires that burned in the dark depths within her.She grew even paler.When I drew the letters from beneath my pillow and held them out to her, she took them mechanically; then, trembling from head to foot, she said in a hollow voice:
"And _I_ burned all his letters!--I have nothing of him left!--Nothing! nothing!"
She struck her hand against her forehead.
"Madame----" I began.
She glanced at me in the convulsion of grief.
"I cut this from his head, this lock of his hair."And I gave her that last imperishable token that had been a very part of him she loved.Ah! if you had felt, as I felt then, her burning tears falling on your hands, you would know what gratitude is, when it follows so closely upon the benefit.Her eyes shone with a feverish glitter, a faint ray of happiness gleamed out of her terrible suffering, as she grasped my hands in hers, and said, in a choking voice:
"Ah! you love! May you be happy always.May you never lose her whom you love."She broke off, and fled away with her treasure.
Next morning, this night-scene among my dreams seemed like a dream; to make sure of the piteous truth, I was obliged to look fruitlessly under my pillow for the packet of letters.There is no need to tell you how the next day went.I spent several hours of it with the Juliette whom my poor comrade had so praised to me.In her lightest words, her gestures, in all that she did and said, I saw proofs of the nobleness of soul, the delicacy of feeling which made her what she was, one of those beloved, loving, and self-sacrificing natures so rarely found upon this earth.
In the evening the Comte de Montpersan came himself as far as Moulins with me.There he spoke with a kind of embarrassment:
"Monsieur, if it is not abusing your good-nature, and acting very inconsiderately towards a stranger to whom we are already under obligations, would you have the goodness, as you are going to Paris, to remit a sum of money to M.de ---- (I forget the name), in the Rue du Sentier; I owe him an amount, and he asked me to send it as soon as possible.""Willingly," said I.And in the innocence of my heart, I took charge of a rouleau of twenty-five louis d'or, which paid the expenses of my journey back to Paris; and only when, on my arrival, I went to the address indicated to repay the amount to M.de Montpersan's correspondent, did I understand the ingenious delicacy with which Juliette had obliged me.Was not all the genius of a loving woman revealed in such a way of lending, in her reticence with regard to a poverty easily guessed?
And what rapture to have this adventure to tell to a woman who clung to you more closely in dread, saying, "Oh, my dear, not you!
YOU must not die!"
End
