“He was about to abandon the search, when, by accident having turned it to replace it in his bosom, a few letters, traced beneath the pedestal, met his eye; he lifted it to the light of the lantern, and read them more distinctly. A few particles of the same dark dust which Fénélon had shaken forth, dropped from the vase upon his hand, and he blew them off with hasty impatience, nor heeded where they fell. The letters traced upon the silver were in relief. To a stranger they would have indicated nothing, but to M. de Talleyrand they were pregnant with a deep and frightful meaning.
“C. H.—March 17th.
“Mercy and Forgiveness!—Miserere!”
“In an instant, he remembered the story which had been afloat some time before, and which he had treated as an old wife’s tale. The beautiful young Countess H——; her husband’s jealousy—his violent death by the hand of the chevalier—the wife’s despair and retirement to the convent at Louvaine—her subsequent death and legacy to Fénélon, which had caused such condemnation and astonishment. ‘Let my body be opened after death,’ said she, in her will, ‘and let the heart which has beat but for him be reduced to ashes, and let it be thus conveyed to him, so that, when he dies, it may repose within his coffin, for it is his own.’ She it was who had designed the vase—she who had chosen the inscription.
“The memory of this event had passed away, and the salons of Paris had been occupied with other subjects of more stirring import; but the whole story burst at once, with all its attendant circumstances of horror, upon the stricken memory of the prince. The dark stream of ashes and the aromatic odour—the coincidence of the initials and the date—and then the tears which had been wrung even from those eyes burning and bloodshot with riot and debauchery—it was evident that the story which had been told, and which he had doubted when every one else believed, was too true. He replaced the vase within the folds of his mantle with a feeling of disgust and hatred towards the cold-blooded roué whose rage for gaming and excitement had led him to commit this sacrilegious deed. He inwardly resolved that no temptation should induce him ever again to associate with the reckless libertine—a promise, however, which he was not very long called upon to keep; for, soon after this adventure, the chevalier was found one morning dead in his bed, having swallowed a strong dose of corrosive acid: fit termination to his wild, unprincipled career.”
“And what became of the silver urn?” said I.
“M. de Talleyrand, with true delicacy of feeling, sent it the very next day to the Marquise de Cossé, an old convent friend of the unfortunate victim, and she, I believe, took the proper means of restoring it to the family.”
“And the mysterious pin? Have you ever seen it?”
“I have,” replied C., laughing aloud; “at least, when I asked the prince concerning its fate, I was shewn a long brassy-looking object, from which all gilding had long ago vanished, and was told that the magical berry had been lost in his various peregrinations. ‘Perhaps,’ observed he, ‘it was stolen by some one who knew its value.’ But as the remark was accompanied by the peculiar dropping of the lip and deadening of the eye with which he usually ventures upon a mystification, I knew well what to think, and questioned him no more.”
My friend paused after he had concluded this strange story, and, beginning to fear lest he had been led away from the original purport of the tale, I reminded him that he had not yet explained to me the particulars of that first interview with Madame Grandt, which had had such a powerful effect on the destinies of the after-life of the prince.
“It was indeed a fitful night,” said C.; “one of those wherein the superstitious might easily believe that the devil is allowed to walk abroad and mingle his curse with the vain projects of aspiring man. It had begun for M. de Talleyrand with a scene of purgatory—it ended with a vision of heaven.