第43章

"Give up my life! Ah! you do not know all that I am leaving."

Denise looked at her brother as if to warn him that even in matters of religion he must be cautious.

"Let us say no more about it," he resumed, eating the fruit with an avidity which told of his inward fire. "When am I--"

"No, no! say nothing of that before me!" said the mother.

"But I should be easier in mind if I knew," he said, in a low voice to the rector.

"Always the same nature," exclaimed Monsieur Bonnet. Then he bent down to the prisoner's ear and whispered, "If you will reconcile yourself this night with God so that your repentance will enable me to absolve you, it will be to-morrow. We have already gained much in calming you," he said, aloud.

Hearing these last words, Jean's lips turned pale, his eyes rolled up in a violent spasm, and an angry shudder passed through his frame.

"Am I calm?" he asked himself. Happily his eyes encountered the tearful face of Denise, and he recovered his self-control. "So be it," he said to the rector; "there is no one but you to whom I would listen; they have known how to conquer me."

And he flung himself on his mother's breast.

"My son," said the mother, weeping, "listen to Monsieur Bonnet; he risks his life, the dear rector, in going to you to--" she hesitated, and then said, "to the gate of eternal life."

Then she kissed Jean's head and held it to her breast for some moments.

"Will he, indeed, go with me?" asked Jean, looking at the rector, who bowed his head in assent. "Well, yes, I will listen to him; I will do all he asks of me."

"You promise it?" said Denise. "The saving of your soul is what we seek. Besides, you would not have all Limoges and the village say that a Tascheron knows not how to die a noble death? And then, too, think that all you lose here you will regain in heaven, where pardoned souls will meet again."

This superhuman effort parched the throat of the heroic girl. She was silent after this, like her mother, but she had triumphed. The criminal, furious at seeing his happiness torn from him by the law, now quivered at the sublime Catholic truth so simply expressed by his sister. All women, even young peasant-women like Denise, know how to touch these delicate chords; for does not every woman seek to make love eternal? Denise had touched two chords, each most sensitive.

Awakened pride called on the other virtues chilled by misery and hardened by despair. Jean took his sister's hand and kissed it, and laid it on his heart in a deeply significant manner; he applied it both gently and forcibly.

"Yes," he said, "I must renounce all; this is the last beating of my heart, its last thought. Keep them, Denise."

And he gave her one of those glances by which a man in crucial moments tries to put his soul into the soul of another human being.

This thought, this word, was, in truth, a last testament, an unspoken legacy, to be as faithfully transmitted as it was trustfully given. It was so fully understood by mother, sister, and priest, that they all with one accord turned their faces from each other, to hide their tears and keep the secret of their thoughts in their own breasts.

Those few words were the dying agony of a passion, the farewell of a soul to the glorious things of earth, in accordance with true Catholic renunciation. The rector, comprehending the majesty of all great human things, even criminal things, judged of this mysterious passion by the enormity of the sin. He raised his eyes to heaven as if to invoke the mercy of God. Thence come the consolations, the infinite tendernesses of the Catholic religion,--so humane, so gentle with the hand that descends to man, showing him the law of higher spheres; so awful, so divine, with that other hand held out to lead him into heaven.

Denise had now significantly shown the rector the spot by which to strike that rock and make the waters of repentance flow. But suddenly, as though the memories evoked were dragging him backwards, Jean-Francois gave the harrowing cry of the hyena when the hunters overtake it.

"No, no!" he cried, falling on his knees, "I will live! Mother, give me your clothes; I can escape! Mercy, mercy! Go see the king; tell him--"

He stopped, gave a horrible roar, and clung convulsively to the rector's cassock.

"Go," said Monsieur Bonnet, in a low voice, to the agitated women.

Jean heard the words; he raised his head, gazed at his mother and sister, then he stopped and kissed their feet.

"Let us say farewell now; do not come back; leave me alone with Monsieur Bonnet. You need not be uneasy about me any longer," he said, pressing his mother and his sister to him with a strength in which he seemed to put all his life.

"How is it we do not die of this?" said Denise to her mother as they passed through the wicket.

It was nearly eight o'clock when this parting took place. At the gate of the prison the two women met the Abbe de Rastignac, who asked them news of the prisoner.

"He will no doubt be reconciled with God," said Denise. "If repentance has not yet begun, he is very near it."

The bishop was soon after informed that the clergy would triumph on this occasion, and that the criminal would go to the scaffold with the most edifying religious sentiments. The prelate, with whom was the attorney-general, expressed a wish to see the rector. Monsieur Bonnet did not reach the palace before midnight. The Abbe Gabriel, who made many trips between the palace and the jail, judged it necessary to fetch the rector in the episcopal coach; for the poor priest was in a state of exhaustion which almost deprived him of the use of his legs.