The Mysteries Of Paris Volume Ii Part 11

"I slept so late, that Mademoiselle Clara awoke me by kissing me. To overcome what she called my coldness, and show her regard, she told me a secret--that she was going to be married when she was eighteen to the son of a farmer at Goussainville, whom she loved very dearly, and the union had long been agreed upon by the two families. Then she added a few words of her past life, so simple, calm, and happy! She had never quitted her mother, and never intended to do so, for her husband was to take part in the management of the farm with M. Dubreuil. 'Now, Marie,'

she said, 'you know me as well as if you were my sister. So tell me all about your early days.'

"I thought when I heard the words that I should have died of them; I blushed and stammered; I did not know what Madame Georges had said of me, and I was fearful of telling a falsehood; I answered vaguely, that I had been an orphan, educated by a very rigid person; and that I had not been happy in my infancy; and that my happiness was dated from the moment when I had come to live with Madame Georges; then Clara, as much by interest as curiosity, asked me where I had been educated, in the city or the country, my father's name, and, above all, if I remembered anything of my mother. All these questions embarra.s.sed as much as they pained me, for I was obliged to reply with falsehood, and you have taught me, father, how wicked it is to lie; but Clara did not think that I was deceiving her; she attributed the hesitation of my answers to the pain which my early sorrows renewed; she believed me and pitied me with a sincerity that cut me to the soul. Oh, father, you never can know what I suffered in this conversation, and how much it cost me only to reply in language of falsehood and hypocrisy!"

"Unfortunate girl! The anger of heaven will weigh heavily on those who, by casting you into the vile road of perdition, have compelled you to undergo all your life the sad consequences of a first fault."

"Oh, yes, they were indeed cruel, father," replied Fleur-de-Marie, bitterly, "for my shame is ineffaceable. As Clara talked to me of the happiness that awaited her,--her marriage, her peaceful joys of home, I could not help comparing my lot with hers; for, in spite of the kindness showered upon me, my fate must always be miserable. You and Madame Georges, in teaching me what virtue is, have taught me the depth of that abas.e.m.e.nt into which I had fallen; nothing can take from me the brand of having been the refuse of all that is vilest in the world. Alas! if the knowledge of good and evil was to be so sad to me, why not have abandoned me to my unhappy fate?"

"Oh, Marie, Marie!"

"Father, I speak ill, do I not? Alas! I dare not confess it; but I am at times so ungrateful as to repine at the benefits heaped upon me, and to say to myself, 'If I had not been s.n.a.t.c.hed from infamy, why, wretchedness, misery, blows, would soon have ended my life; and, at least, I should have remained in ignorance of that purity which I must for ever regret.'"

"Alas! Marie, that is indeed fatal! A nature ever so n.o.bly endowed by the Creator, though plunged but for one day in the foul mire from which you have been extricated, will preserve for ever the ineffaceable stigma."

"Yes, yes, my father," cried Fleur-de-Marie, full of grief, "I must despair until I die!"

"You must despair of ever tearing out this frightful page from the book of your existence," said the priest, in a sad and serious voice; "but you must have faith in the infinite mercy of the Almighty. Here, on earth, my poor child, there are for you tears, remorse, expiation; but, one day, there,--up there," and he raised his hand to the sky, now filling with stars, "there is pardon and everlasting happiness."

"Pity, pity, _mon Dieu_! I am so young, and my life may still endure so long," said the Goualeuse, in a voice rent by agony, and falling at the cure's knees almost involuntarily.

The priest was standing at the top of the hill, not far from where his "modest mansion rose;" his black ca.s.sock, his venerable countenance, shaded by long white locks, lighted by the last ray of twilight, stood out from the horizon, which was of a deep transparency,--a perfect clearness: pale gold in the west, sapphire over his head. The priest again elevated towards heaven one of his tremulous hands, and gave the other to Fleur-de-Marie, who bedewed it with her tears. The hood of her gray cloak fell at this moment from her shoulders, displaying the perfect outline of her lovely profile,--her charming features full of suffering, and suffused with tears.

This simple and sublime scene offered a strange contrast,--a singular coincidence with the horrid one which, almost at the same moment, was pa.s.sing in the ravine between the Schoolmaster and the Chouette.

Concealed in the darkness of the sombre cleft, a.s.sailed by base fears, a fearful murderer, carrying on his person the punishment of his crimes, was also on his knees, but in the presence of an accessory, a sneering, revengeful Fury, who tormented him mercilessly, and urged him on to fresh crimes,--that accomplice, the first cause of Fleur-de-Marie's misery.

Of Fleur-de-Marie, whose days and nights were embittered by never-dying remorse; whose anguish, hardly endurable, was not conceivable; surrounded from her earliest days by degraded, cruel, infamous outcasts of society; leaving the walls of a prison for the den of the ogress,--even a more horrid prison; never leaving the precincts of her gaol, or the squalid streets of the Cite; this unhappy young creature had hitherto lived in utter ignorance of the beautiful and the good, as strange to n.o.ble and religious sentiments as to the magnificent splendour of nature. Then all that was admirable in the creature and in the Creator was revealed in a moment to her astonished soul. At this striking spectacle her mind expanded, her intelligence unfolded itself, her n.o.ble instincts were awakened; and because her mind expanded, because her intelligence was unfolded, because her n.o.ble instincts were awakened, yet the very consciousness of her early degradation brings with it the feeling of horror for her past life, alike torturing and enduring,--she feels, as she had described, that, alas! there are stains which nothing can remove.

"Ah, unhappiness for me!" said the Goualeuse, in despair; "my whole life has long to run, it may be; were it as long, as pure as your own, father, it must henceforth be blighted by the knowledge and consciousness of the past; unhappiness for me for ever!"

"On the contrary, Marie, it is happiness for you,--yes, happiness for you. Your remorse, so full of bitterness, but so purifying, testifies the religious susceptibility of your mind. How many there are who, less n.o.bly sensitive than you, would, in your place, have soon forgotten the fact, and only revelled in the delight of the present. Believe me, every pang that you now endure will tell in your favour when on high. G.o.d has left you for a moment in an unrighteous path, to reserve for you the glory of repentance and the everlasting reward reserved for expiation.

Has he not said himself, 'Those who fight the good fight and come to me with a smile on their lips, they are my chosen; but they who, wounded in the struggle, come to me fainting and dying, they are the chosen amongst my chosen!' Courage, then, my child! Support, help, counsel,--nothing will fail you. I am very aged, but Madame Georges and M. Rodolph have still many years before them; particularly M. Rodolph, who has taken so deep an interest in you, who watches your progress with so much anxiety."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'_So I Have Brought Turk with Me_'"

Original Etching by Adrian Marcel]

The Goualeuse was about to reply, when she was interrupted by the peasant girl whom we have already mentioned, who, having followed in the steps of the cure and Marie, now came up to them. She was one of the peasants of the farm.

"Beg your pardon, M. le Cure," she said to the priest, "but Madame Georges told me to bring this basket of fruit to the rectory, and then I could accompany Mlle. Marie back again, for it is getting late. So I have brought Turk with me," added the dairy-maid, patting an enormous dog of the Pyrenees, which would have mastered a bear in a struggle.

"Although we never have any bad people about us here in the country, it is as well to be careful."

"You are quite right, Claudine. Here we are now at the rectory. Pray thank Madame Georges for me."

Then addressing the Goualeuse in a low tone, the cure said to her, in a grave voice:

"I must go to-morrow to the conference of the diocese, but I shall return at five o'clock. If you like, my child, I will wait for you at the rectory. I see your state of mind, and that you require a lengthened conversation with me."

"I thank you, father," replied Fleur-de-Marie. "To-morrow I will come, since you are so good as to allow me to do so."

"Here we are at the garden gate," said the priest. "Leave your basket there, Claudine; my housekeeper will take it. Return quickly to the farm with Marie, for it is almost night, and the cold is increasing.

To-morrow, Marie, at five o'clock."

"To-morrow, father."

The abbe went into his garden. The Goualeuse and Claudine, followed by Turk, took the road to the farm.

CHAPTER VI.

THE RENCOUNTER.

The night set in clear and cold. Following the advice of the Schoolmaster, the Chouette had gone to that part of the hollow way which was the most remote from the path, and nearest to the cross-road where Barbillon was waiting with the hackney-coach. Tortillard, who was posted as an advanced guard, watched for the return of Fleur-de-Marie, whom he was desirous of drawing into the trap by begging her to come to the a.s.sistance of a poor old woman. The son of Bras Rouge had advanced a few steps out of the ravine to try and discern Marie, when he heard the Goualeuse some way off speaking to the peasant girl who accompanied her.

The plan had failed; and Tortillard quickly went down into the ravine to run and inform the Chouette.

"There is somebody with the young girl," said he, in a low and breathless tone.

"May the hangman squeeze her weasand, the little beggar," exclaimed the Chouette in a rage.

"Who's with her?" asked the Schoolmaster.

"Oh, no doubt, the country wench who pa.s.sed along the road just now, followed by a large dog. I heard a woman's voice," said Tortillard.

"Hark!--do you hear? There's the noise of their sabots," and, in the silence of the night, the wooden soles sounded clearly on the ground hardened by the frost.

"There are two of 'em. I can manage the young 'un in the gray mantle, but what can we do with t'other? _Fourline_ can't see, and Tortillard is too weak to do for the companion--devil choke her! What can be done?"

asked the Chouette.

"I'm not strong, but, if you like, I'll cling to the legs of the country-woman with the dog. I'll hold on by hands and teeth, and not let her go, I can tell you. You can take away the little one in the meantime, you know, Chouette."

"If they cry or resist, they will hear them at the farm," replied the Chouette, "and come to their a.s.sistance before we can reach Barbillon's coach. It is no easy thing to carry off a woman who resists."

"And they have a large dog with them," said Tortillard.

"Bah! bah! If it was only that, I could break the brute's skull with a blow of my shoe-heel," said the Chouette.

"Here they are," replied Tortillard, who was listening still to the echo of their footsteps. "They are coming down the hollow now."

"Why don't you speak, _fourline_?" said the Chouette to the Schoolmaster. "What is best to be done, long-headed as you are, eh? Are you grown dumb?"

"There's nothing to be done to-day," replied the miscreant.

"And the thousand 'bob' of the man in mourning," said the Chouette; "they are gone, then? I'd sooner--Your knife--your knife, _fourline_! I will stick the companion, that she may be no trouble to us; and, as to the young miss, Tortillard and I can make off with her."

"But the man in mourning does not desire that we should kill any one."

"Well, then, we must put the cold meat down as an extra in his bill. He must pay, for he will be an accomplice with us."