CHAPTER LVII.
THE GUARDIAN ANGEL.
To the charming freshness of the sisters' faces had succeeded a livid pallor. Their large blue eyes, now hollow and sunk in, appeared of enormous dimensions. Their lips, once so rosy, were now suffused with a violet hue, and a similar color was gradually displacing the transparent carmine of their cheeks and fingers. It was as if all the roses in their charming countenances were fading and turning blue before the icy blast of death.
When the orphans met, tottering and hardly able to sustain themselves, a cry of mutual horror burst from their lips. Each of them exclaimed, at sight of the fearful change in her sister's features. "Are you also ill, sister?" And then, bursting into tears, they threw themselves into each other's arms, and looked anxiously at one another.
"Good heaven, Rose! how pale you are!"
"Like you, sister."
"And do you feel a cold shudder?"
"Yes, and my sight fails me."
"My bosom is all on fire."
"Sister, we are perhaps going to die."
"Let it only be together!"
"And our poor father?"
"And Dagobert?"
"Sister, our dream has come true!" cried Rose, almost deliriously, as she threw her arms round Blanche's neck. "Look! look! the Angel Gabriel is here to fetch us."
Indeed, at this moment, Gabriel entered the open space at the end of the room. "Heaven! what do I see?" cried the young priest. "The daughters of Marshal Simon!"
And, rushing forward, he received the sisters in his arms, for they were no longer able to stand. Already their drooping heads, their half-closed eyes, their painful and difficult breathing, announced the approach of death. Sister Martha was close at hand. She hastened to respond to the call of Gabriel. Aided by this pious woman, he was able to lift the orphans upon a bed reserved for the doctor in attendance. For fear that the sight of this mournful agony should make too deep an impression on the other patients, Sister Martha drew a large curtain, and the sisters were thus in some sort walled off from the rest of the room. Their hands had been so tightly clasped together, during a nervous paroxysm, that it was impossible to separate them. It was in this position that the first remedies were applied—remedies incapable of conquering the violence of the disease, but which at least mitigated for a few moments the excessive pains they suffered, and restored some faint glimmer of perception to their obscured and troubled senses. At this moment, Gabriel was leaning over the bed with a look of inexpressible grief. With breaking heart, and face bathed in tears, he thought of the strange destiny, which thus made him a witness of the death of these girls, his relations, whom but a few months before he had rescued from the horrors of the tempest. In spite of his firmness of soul, the missionary could not help shuddering as he reflected on the fate of the orphans, the death of Jacques Rennepont, and the fearful devices by which M. Hardy, retired to the cloistered solitude of St. Herein, had become a member of the Society of Jesus almost in dying. The missionary said to himself, that already four members of the Rennepont family—his family—had been successively struck down by some dreadful fate; and he asked himself with alarm, how it was that the detestable interests of the Society of Loyola should be served by a providential fatality? The astonishment of the young missionary would have given place to the deepest horror, could he have known the part that Rodin and his accomplices had taken, both in the death of Jacques Rennepont, by exciting, through Morok, the evil propensities of the artisan, and in the approaching end of Rose and Blanche, by converting, through the Princess de Saint-Dizier, the generous inspirations of the orphans into suicidal heroism.
Roused for a moment from the painful stupor in which they had been plunged, Rose and Blanche half-opened their large eyes, already dull and faded. Then, more and more bewildered they both gazed fixedly at the angelic countenance of Gabriel.
"Sister," said Rose, in a faint voice, "do you see the archangel—as in our dreams, in Germany?"
"Yes—three days ago—he appeared to us."
"He is come to fetch us."
"Alas! will our death save our poor mother from purgatory?"
"Angel! blessed angel! pray God for our mother—and for us!" Until now, stupefied with amazement and sorrow, almost suffocated with sobs, Gabriel had not been able to utter a word. But at these words of the orphans, he exclaimed: "Dear children, why doubt of your mother's salvation? Oh! never did a purer soul ascend to its Creator. Your mother? I know from my adopted father, that her virtues and courage were the admiration of all who knew her. Oh! believe me; God has blessed her."
"Do you hear, sister?" cried Rose, as a ray of celestial joy illumined for an instant the livid faces of the orphans. "God has blessed our mother."
"Yes, yes," resumed Gabriel; "banish these gloomy ideas. Take courage, poor children! You must not die. Think of your father."
"Our father?" said Blanche, shuddering; and she continued, with a mixture of reason and wild excitement, which would have touched the soul of the most indifferent: "Alas! he will not find us on his return. Forgive us, father! we did not think to do any harm. We wished, like you, to do something generous—to help our governess."
"And we did not think to die so quickly, and so soon. Yesterday, we were gay and happy."
"Oh, good angel! you will appear to our father, even as you have appeared to us. You will tell him that, in dying—the last thought of his children—was of him."
"We came here without Dagobert's knowing it—do not let our father scold him."
"Blessed angel!" resumed the other sister in a still more feeble voice; "appear to Dagobert, also. Tell him, that we ask his forgiveness, for the grief our death will occasion him."
"And let our old friend caress our poor Spoil-sport for us—our faithful guardian," added Blanche, trying to smile.
"And then," resumed Rose, in a voice that was growing still fainter, "promise to appear to two other persons, that have been so kind to us—good Mother Bunch—and the beautiful Lady Adrienne."
"We forget none whom we have loved," said Blanche, with a last effort.
"Now, God grant we may go to our mother, never to leave her more!"
"You promised it good angel—you know you did—in the dream. You said to us: 'Poor children—come from so far—you will have traversed the earth—to rest on the maternal bosom!'"
"Oh! it is dreadful—dreadful! So young—and no hope!" murmured Gabriel, as he buried his face in his hands. "Almighty Father! Thy views are impenetrable. Alas! yet why should these children die this cruel death?"
Rose heaved a deep sigh and said in an expiring tone: "Let us be buried together!—united in life, in death not divided—"
And the two turned their dying looks upon Gabriel, and stretched out towards him their supplicating hands.
"Oh, blessed martyrs to a generous devotion!" cried the missionary, raising to heaven his eyes streaming with tears. "Angelic souls! treasures of innocence and truth! ascend, ascend to heaven—since God calls you to him, and the earth is not worthy to possess you!"
"Sister! father!" were the last words that the orphans pronounced with their dying voices.
And then the twins, by a last instinctive impulse, endeavored to clasp each other, and their eyes half-opened to exchange yet another glance. They shuddered twice or thrice, their limbs stiffened, a deep sigh struggled from their violet-colored lips. Rose and Blanche were both dead! Gabriel and Sister Martha, after closing the eyes of the orphans, knelt down to pray by the side of that funeral couch. Suddenly a great tumult was heard in the room. Rapid footsteps, mingled with imprecations, sounded close at hand, the curtain was drawn aside from this mournful scene, and Dagobert entered precipitately, pale, haggard, his dress in disorder. At sight of Gabriel and the Sister of Charity kneeling beside the corpses of his children, the soldier uttered a terrible roar, and tried to advance—but in vain—for, before Gabriel could reach him, Dagobert fell flat on the ground, and his gray head struck violently on the floor.
It is night—a dark and stormy night. One o'clock in the morning has just sounded from the church of Montmartre. It is to the cemetery of Montmartre that is carried the coffin which, according to the last wishes of Rose and Blanche contains them both. Through the thick shadow, which rests upon that field of death, may be seen moving a pale light. It is the gravedigger. He advances with caution; a dark lantern is in his hand. A man wrapped in a cloak accompanies him. He holds down his head and weeps. It is Samuel. The old Jew—the keeper of the house in the Rue Saint-Francois. On the night of the funeral of Jacques Rennepont, the first who died of the seven heirs, and who was buried in another cemetery, Samuel had a similar mysterious interview with the gravedigger, to obtain a favor at the price of gold. A strange and awful favor! After passing down several paths, bordered with cypress trees, by the side of many tombs, the Jew and the gravedigger arrived, at a little glade, situated near the western wall of the cemetery. The night was so dark, that scarcely anything could be seen. After moving his lantern up and down, and all about, the gravedigger showed Samuel, at the foot of a tall yew-tree, with long black branches, a little mound of newly-raised earth, and said: "It is here."
"You are sure of it?"
"Yes, yes—two bodies in one coffin! it is not such a common thing."
"Alas! two in the same coffin!" said the Jew, with a deep sigh.
"Now that you know the place, what do you want more?" asked the gravedigger.
Samuel did not answer. He fell on his knees, and piously kissed the little mound. Then rising, with his cheeks bathed in tears, he approached the gravedigger, and spoke to him for some moments in a whisper—though they were alone, and in the centre of that deserted place. Then began between those two men a mysterious dialogue, which the night enveloped in shade and silence. The gravedigger, alarmed at what Samuel asked him, at first refused his request.
But the Jew, employing persuasions, entreaties, tears, and at last the seduction of the jingling gold, succeeded in conquering the scruples of the gravedigger. Though the latter trembled at the thought of what he promised, he said to Samuel in an agitated tone: "To-morrow night, then, at two o'clock."
"I shall be behind the wall," answered Samuel, pointing out the place with the aid of a lantern. "I will throw three stones into the cemetery, for a signal."
"Yes, three stones—as a signal," replied the gravedigger shuddering, and wiping the cold sweat from his forehead.
With considerable remains of vigor, notwithstanding his great age, Samuel availed himself of the broken surface of the low wall, and climbing over it, soon disappeared. The gravedigger returned home with hasty strides. From time to time, he looked fearfully behind him, as though he had been pursued by some fatal vision.
On the evening after the funeral of Rose and Blanche, Rodin wrote two letters. The first, addressed to his mysterious correspondent at Rome, alluded to the deaths of Jacques Rennepont, and Rose and Blanche Simon, as well as to the cession of M. Hardy's property, and the donation of Gabriel—events which reduced the claimants of the inheritance to two—Mdlle. de Cardoville and Djalma. This first note written by Rodin for Rome, contained only the following words: "Five from seven leaves two. Announce this result to the Cardinal-Prince. Let him go on. I advance advance-advance!" The second note, in a feigned hand, was addressed to Marshal Simon, to be delivered by a sure messenger, contained these few lines: "If there is yet time, make haste to return. Your daughters are both dead. You shall learn who killed them."