"Brother! brother!" he murmured, "why do you turn away your head when I pray to you? In the name of our mother, Pascal, let me clasp your knees. Remember the tears we shed together in our childhood, which the first Blues made so bitter. Forgive me for having followed the terrible path our father enjoined on both of us. Alas! alas! how could I know it would bring you and me face to face as enemies? My God! my God! he does not answer me! Oh, Pascal, why do you turn away your head? Oh! my poor child, my little Louis, whom I shall never see again," continued the Chouan, "pray to your uncle, pray to him for me! He loved you as his own child; ask him, in the name of your dying father, to help a repentant sinner to reach the throne of God! Ah, brother! brother!" he murmured, with a sudden expression of joy that bordered on ecstasy, "you hear him, you pardon me, you stretch your hand to the child. My God! my God! take my soul now, for my brother has forgiven me!"
He fell back upon the ground from which, by a mighty effort, he had risen to stretch his arms toward the vision.
During this time, and gradually, the hatred and vengeance in the widow's face subsided. When Joseph spoke of the little boy whom Pascal loved as his own child, a tear forced its way from her eyelids; and when at last, by the gleam of her torch, she saw the face of the dying man illuminated, not with an earthly light, but by a sacred halo, she fell upon her knees, and pressing the hand of her wounded brother, she cried out:--
"I believe you, I believe you, Joseph! God unseals the eyes of the dying and lets them see into the heights of heaven. If Pascal pardons you, I pardon you. As he forgets, so I forget. Yes, I forget all to remember one thing only,--that you were his brother. Brother of Pascal, die in peace!"
"Thank you, thank you," stammered Joseph, whose voice now hissed through his lips, which were stained with a bloody froth. "Thank you! but--the wife, the children?"
"Your wife shall be my sister, and your children are my children," said the widow, solemnly. "Die in peace, Joseph!"
The hand of the Chouan went to his forehead as though he meant to make the sign of the cross; his lips murmured a few words, doubtless not said for human ears, for no one understood them. Then he opened his eyes unnaturally wide, stretched out his arm, and gave a sigh; it was his last.
"Amen!" said Maître Jacques.
The widow knelt down and prayed beside the body for some instants,--quite amazed that her eyes should be filled with tears for him who had made her weep so bitterly.
A long silence followed. No doubt this silence oppressed Maître Jacques, for he suddenly called out:--