"'Yes, Denise, unless I die suddenly in my sleep--an end I have often prayed for. But this great blessing may be denied to me.'
"Ah, how sad were the days! It fills me with grief, even now, to speak of them. All kinds of strange notions entered my head during that time. I used to think it would be a mercy if a terrible flood were to come, or if someone would set fire to the villa. It would bring these two unhappy beings together for a few minutes at least. But nothing happened; the days were all alike, except that I saw very plainly that my lady could not live through another summer. She was fading away before my eyes.
"The end came at last, when Master Christian was nearly nine years old."
CHAPTER XI
[BEATRICE ALMER GIVES A PROMISE TO HER SON]
"It was a spring morning, and my lady was alone. Master Christian was in the woods with his father; he was to be home at noon, and my lady was watching for him at her window.
"Exactly at noon the lad returned, beaming with delight; the hours he spent with his father were memorable hours in his life.
"'You have enjoyed yourself, Christian,' said my lady, drawing her boy to her side, and smoothing his hair. 'It does you good to go out with papa.'
"'Yes, mamma,' said the lad, in his eager, excited voice. 'There is no one in the world like papa--no man, I mean. He knows everything--yes, mamma, everything! There isn't a thing you ask him that he can't tell you all about it. We have had such a beautiful walk; the forests are full of birds and squirrels. Papa knows the name of every bird and flower. See, mamma, all these are wild flowers--papa helped me to gather them, and showed me where some of the prettiest are to be found. You should hear him talk about the flowers! He has told me such wonderful, wonderful things about them! I believe they live, as we do, and that they have a language of their own. Papa smiled when I said I thought the flowers were alive, and he told me that the world was full of the loveliest mysteries, and that, although men thought themselves very wise, they really knew very little. Perhaps it is so--with all men but papa. It is because he isn't vain and proud that he doesn't set himself above other men. In the middle of the woods papa stopped and said, as he waved his hand around, "This, Christian, is Nature's book. Not all the wisdom of all the men in all the world could write one line of it. That little bird flying in the air to the nest which it has built for its young, and which is so small that I could hold it in the palm of my hand, is in itself a greater and more marvellous work than the united wisdom of all mankind shall ever be able to produce." There, mamma, you would hardly believe that I should remember papa's words; but I repeated them to myself over and over again as we walked along--they sounded so wonderful! Mamma, are there flowers in heaven?'
"'Yes, my dear,' she answered, gazing upwards, 'forever blooming.'