“Yes, God has perhaps pardoned it,” murmured the marchioness, “but did the world know that which God knows, would it pardon as God has done?”
“The world!” exclaimed the old man; “the world! Yes, there is the great word which has again escaped your lips! The world! It is to it, to that phantom you have sacrificed everything, madam; your feelings as a lover, your feelings as a wife, your feelings as a mother! your own happiness, the happiness of others! The world! It is the fear of the world which has clothed you in perpetual mourning, beneath which you hope to conceal remorse! And in that you are right, for you have succeeded in deceiving it, for it has taken your remorse for virtue!”
The marchioness raised her head with some degree of agitation, and putting aside her veil that she might look upon the person who addressed her in such extraordinary language; then, after a momentary silence, not being able to discover any sinister expression in the calm features of the old man.
“You speak to me,” she said to him, “with a bitterness which would lead me to believe you have some personal reason for reproaching me. Have I failed in any promise I have made? The persons who attend on you by my orders, are they wanting in that respect which I have desired them to observe? You know, if this should be the case, you have only to say a word.”
“Forgive me, madam, it is in sorrow that I speak, not bitterness; it is the effect of solitude and of age. You must well know what it is to have sorrows that you cannot speak of—tears which we dare not shed, and which fall back, drop by drop, upon the heart! No, I have not to complain of any one, madam, since first, from a feeling for which I am truly grateful, without seeking to know whence it emanated, you have been pleased to see personally that my wants were all supplied, and you have not for a single day forgotten your promise, but like the old prophet, I have sometimes seen an angel come as your messenger.”
“Yes,” replied the marchioness, “I know that Marguerite often accompanies the servant who is charged to wait upon you; and I have seen with pleasure the attentions she has paid you, and the friendship she feels for you.”
“But in my turn, I have not failed either, I trust, in the promises I made. For twenty years I have lived far from the habitations of men, I have kept away every living being from this dwelling; so much did I fear on your account, the delirium of my waking hours, or the indiscretion of my dreams.”
“Undoubtedly! undoubtedly! and happily the secret has been well preserved,” said the marchioness, placing her hand upon Achard’s arm; “but this is a stronger incentive in my mind not to lose in a single day the fruit of twenty years, all more gloomy, more isolated, and more terrible than yours have been.”
“Yes, I understand you perfectly; and you have shuddered more than once upon suddenly remembering that there is roaming about the world, a man who may one day call upon me to reveal that secret, and that I have not the right to conceal it from that man. Ah! you tremble at the bare idea, do you not? But, tranquilise yourself; that man, when but a boy, fled from the school at which we had placed him in Scotland, and for ten years past nothing has been heard of him. In short, destined to obscurity, he himself rushed forward to meet his fate. He is now lost amid the millions that crowd this populous world, and not a soul knows where to find him; this poor unit, without a name, is lost for ever. He must have lost his father’s letter, have mislaid the token by which I was to recognise him; or, better still, perhaps he exists no longer.”
“It is cruel of you, Achard,” replied the marchioness, “to utter such words to a mother. You cannot appreciate the strange feelings and singular contradictions contained in the heart of woman. For, in fine, can I not be tranquil unless my child be dead! Consider, my old friend; this secret, of which he has been ignorant five and twenty years, has it become at the age of twenty-five, so necessary to his existence that he cannot live, unless it be revealed to him? Believe me, Achard, for himself even it would be better he should still remain ignorant of it, as he has been to this day. I feel assured that to this day he has been happy—old man, do not mar this happiness—do not inspire his mind with thoughts which may induce him to commit an evil action. No—tell him, in lieu of the dreadful tale you were desired to communicate, that his mother has gone to rejoin his father in heaven; and, would to God that it were so! but that when dying (for I must see him whatever you may say to the contrary, I will even if it be but once, press him to my heart), when dying, as I said, his mother had bequeathed him to her friend the Marchioness d’Auray, in whom he will find a second mother.”