But the count, with tears in his eyes, took the hands of the two young people and said:
"Never were you more worthy of one another than when you renounced your hopes of mutual happiness. You ask my final decision. It is that you shall marry, and it is my earnest wish that you may be happy."
A week later Mademoiselle de la Pagerie became the Vicomtesse de Beauharnais.
Nothing happened to disturb the happiness of the young people until the Revolution began. The Vicomte de Beauharnais ranged himself among those who favored its adoption; only he made the mistake of thinking that the avalanche could be directed as it rushed on, carrying all before it. He was swept in its wake to the scaffold.
[CHAPTER XXVII]
WHERE AN ANGEL STEPS A MIRACLE IS PERFORMED
On the evening preceding the day on which he was to die, the Vicomte de Beauharnais wrote his wife the following letter. It was his final farewell:
Night of the 6th and 7th Thermidor.
At the ConciergerieYet a few moments to give to love, to tears, and to regrets, and then every thought shall be devoted to the glory of my destiny and to the great dreams of immortality. When you receive this letter, oh, my Josephine, your husband, in the words of this world, will long have ceased to exist; but already in the bosom of his God, he will have tasted of the joys of real life. You see therefore that you must not weep for him. The wicked men, the senseless ones who survive him, should have all your tears, for they do evil and cannot repair it.
But do not let us blacken with their guilty image these last moments. I would, on the contrary, brighten them by thinking that, beloved by an adorable wife, the short day of our wedded life has passed without the slightest cloud. Yes, our union has lasted but a day, and that reflection draws a sigh from me. But how serene and pure was that day which has vanished like a dream; and how grateful ought I to be to that Providence which must have you in its keeping! To-day that same Providence is taking me away before my time, and that is another of its favors. Can a good man live without grief, and almost remorse, when he sees the whole universe in the clutches of the wicked? I should therefore be glad to be taken away from them, were it not for the feeling that I am leaving to their tender mercies lives which are so precious and dear to me. If, however, the thoughts of the dying are trustworthy presentiments, I feel in my heart that these butcheries are soon to cease, and that the executioners will follow their victims to the scaffold....
I resume these incoherent, almost illegible lines after being interrupted by my keepers. I have just undergone a cruel formality which, under other circumstances, I would rather have died than endure. But why cavil at necessity? Reason teaches us to make the best of it.
After they had cut off my hair, I bethought me of buying back a part of it, in order to leave my dear wife and children unequivocal proofs and tokens of my dying remembrance.... I feel my heart breaking at this thought, and my paper is wet with tears.
Farewell, all that I love. Love me, speak of me, and never forget that the glory of dying a victim of tyrants, and a martyr to the cause of liberty, makes the scaffold illustrious!
Arrested in turn, as we have already mentioned, the vicomtesse wrote to her children, just before she was to die, in the same strain. She ended a long letter, which we have before us, with these words: