"That is not her style of folding:—still, never mind, as it comes from Angers...."
Then, turning it over to break the envelope he exclaimed, "Ah! my God! it is sealed in black! Poor soul, some misfortune has befallen her!"
And M. Villenave grew pale as he unsealed the letter; it enclosed a second one.
His eyes filled with tears as he read the first lines of the first letter.
"Look," he said, and he held it out to me, "read it"; and, while he silently and sadly opened the second letter, I took the first and read:—
"MONSIEUR,—It is with personal grief, increased by realising what you too will feel, that I have to inform you that Madame——died on Sunday last, at the last stroke of midnight. The day before, while she was writing to you, she was seized by an indisposition which we thought at first was only slight, but it grew worse, until she died. I have the sad duty of sending to you the letter she had begun to write to you, unfinished as it is. This letter will assure you that her affection for you remained unchanged to the end.
"I remain, Monsieur, in great grief, as you will readily believe, your very humble and very obedient servant,
"THÉRÈSE MIRAUD"
"So you see," resumed M. Villenave, "it was at the last stroke of midnight that the portrait fell, and it was at the last stroke of midnight that she died."
I felt that his grief needed a solitude peopled only by past recollections and uninterrupted by any poor attempts I could offer at consolation. I picked up my hat, pressed his hand and left.
This incident recalled to me the apparition of my father, on the very night of his death, which woke me up when I was a little child, and I put to myself the question that is so often asked and never answered, "What are the mysterious bonds which bind the dead to the living?" Later, when I lost my mother, whom I loved more than anyone else in the world, and who, on her side, loved me beyond all telling, I remembered these two visions and, kneeling down by the bed on which she had just expired, with my lips on her hand, I implored her, if anything of her had survived, to appear to me just once again; then, when night came, I lay down in a lonely room and waited with a beating heart, hoping to see the beloved vision. I counted in vain nearly all the hours of that night, and not the slightest sound or apparition came to solace my sorrowful watch. After that, I doubted all such experiences, whether my own or others'; for my mother's love for me, and mine for her, were so great that I knew if she had been able to rise once more from her resting-place to bid me a last farewell she would surely have done it. But perhaps it is only children and old people who are privileged—children because they are nearer the cradle, old people because they are nearer the grave.