THE LAST SLEEP.
Adèle had long since discovered that the events of greatest interest in her life had transpired before she entered the walls of Rossillon, or mingled in the festivities of the Court at Paris.
The scenes that occurred at Miramichi, during Mr. Lansdowne's accidental residence there, were fraught with a power over her heart, continually deepening with the flight of time. Those golden days, when their lives flowed side by side, had been filled with the strange, sweet agitations, the aerial dreams, the bewitching glamour, the intoxicating happiness of a first and youthful love. Those days were imprinted yet more deeply in her memory by a consciousness that there was somewhat with which to reproach herself connected with them. Just when she had reached the top of bliss, her pride had sprung up, and like a dark stormcloud, had shadowed the scene. She could not forget that cold, sad parting from her lover.
And now, though the ocean rolled between them, and the spheres in which each moved were so widely separated and the years had come and gone, she was yet calculating and balancing the probabilities, that they might meet again and the wrong of the past be cancelled.
Mr. Lansdowne had been plodding among musty law books and threading legal intricacies, with occasional interruptions, caused by fits of impatience and disgust at the detail and tedium of study, until he had at length fought his way through and placed himself in the front rank of his profession. His brilliant achievement in the famous Jenkins case, in the outset of his career, had at once won for him a position at the bar which most young men have to toil years to obtain. His family was wealthy and influential. It was not strange that with these advantages, united to the possession of remarkable personal beauty, he should be the centre of a numerous group of friends and admirers. He was the object of pride among the older barristers and gentlemen of the bench, the cynosure of the young men, and the one among a thousand whom elegant mammas and smiling maidens wooed with their selectest influences.
Yet one great element of earthly happiness was wanting to his life. He could not forget the enchantment of those days spent in the far-off wilds of Miramichi. He turned continually to those scenes, as the most prominent of his existence. There he had stepped from boyhood into manhood. There he had seen life in new and before untried forms. He had there witnessed a wonderful display of God's power through the terrible agency of the all-devouring flame, and there, for the first time, he had confronted death and sorrow. There, he had loved once and as he believed, forever. He recalled Adèle, as she first appeared before him,—an unexpected vision of beauty, in all her careless grace and sweet, confiding frankness; in her moments of stately pride, when she chilled him from her side and kept him afar off; and in her moments of affectionate kindness, and generous enthusiasm. In short, in all her changeful moods she was daily flitting before him and he confessed to himself, that he had never met a being so rich in nature and varied in powers, so noble in impulse and purpose, so peerlessly beautiful in person.
Thus he lived on from day to day, remembering and yearning and dreaming,—the ocean yawning between him and his love. Concealed in the depths of his soul, there was, however, a hope fondly cherished, and a purpose half formed.
A few weeks after the reception of Mr. Norton's letter, the Count de Rossillon died. Sitting, as usual, in his great purple-cushioned arm-chair, taking his afternoon nap, he expired so gently that Mrs. Dubois, who was reading by the window, did not know, or even suspect, when the parting between spirit and body occurred. Kindly, genial, and peaceful had been his last years, and his life went out calmly as the light of day goes out amid the mellow tints of a pleasant autumn sunset.
When Mrs. Dubois went to arouse him from what seemed an unusually long slumber, she found a volume of Fénélon spread open upon his knee, and turning it, her eye ran over passages full of lofty and devout aspiration. These, probably expressed the latest thoughts and desires of the good chevalier, for as she looked from the pages to his face, turned upward toward the ceiling, a smile of assent and satisfaction was still lingering there, although his breath had departed and his pulse was still.
Mrs. Dubois stooped to kiss the forehead of her uncle, but started back with a sudden thrill of fear. She gazed searchingly at him for a moment, and then she knew that Death, the conqueror, stood there with her, looking upon his completed work.
After the first shock of surprise was over, she remained gazing upon the spectacle in perfect silence. A truly devout Catholic, in her grief she leaned with all a woman's trust and confidingness upon the love and power of Christ, and something of the divine calmness which we associate with the character of the mother of our Lord, and which has been so wonderfully depicted to the eye by some of the older painters, pervaded her spirit.
As she thus stood, spellbound, entranced, her eyes fixed upon the noble features irradiated with a smile of content and peace, the long silvery locks parted away from the forehead and flowing around the head, like a halo, she thought it the countenance of a saint, and her poetic fancy created at once a vision of the Saviour, with an aspect grand, glorious, yet gracious and benign, placing with His right hand a golden jewelled crown upon her uncle's head. A cloud swept up over the gorgeous earthliness of the great Rubens picture, and from out its folds shone sweet and smiling angel faces, looking down upon the scene.
Mrs. Dubois never knew how long she remained thus absorbed. She was first aroused by hearing a voice saying, in tones of fervor, "How blessed it is to die!" And Adèle, who had entered the room a little time before, and had uttered these words, stepped forward and imprinted a kiss upon the pale uplifted brow of the sleeper.