“I wrote the lines after supping with Breslot,” said the author. “One is not accountable for words uttered in moments of debility and hunger.”
“Be the lines what they may, let us hear Mademoiselle read them,” said Talma; “and I mistake greatly but, with all our studied accuracy, we shall learn something from one whose nature is not bound by our trammels.”
To have adventured on such a task, before such an audience, was more than Margot could dare to contemplate, and she grew faint and sick at the bare thought. They were not, however, of that mould which listens to excuses and refusals. The great familiarity which existed amongst them excluded all deference to individual likings or dislikings, and if servants of the public on the stage, off the boards they were the slaves of each other. Margot, almost lifeless with terror, was therefore obliged to comply. At first the words fell from her lips almost inaudibly; by degrees her voice gained strength, and only a tremulous accent betrayed the struggle within her. But at last, when she came to the part where the nun, as if asking herself whether the world and its fascinations had taken no hold upon her heart, confesses, with a burst of spirit-wrung misery, that it was so, and that to leave that joyous sunlight for the gloomy sepulchre of the cloister was worse than death itself, her utterance grew full and strong, her dark eyes flashed, her color heightened, her bosom heaved, and she gave the passage with such a burst of thrilling eloquence that the last words were drowned in thunders of applause, only hushed as they beheld her fall back fainting, and perfectly overcome by her emotions.
“And you think you can take the veil, child?” asked Mademoiselle Mars, when they were alone.
But Margot made no answer.
“You believe, Margot, that it will be possible for you to stifle within you feelings such as these, and that the veil and the cord can change your nature? No, no! If the heart be not dead, it is cruelty to bury it. Yours is not so, and shall have another destiny.”
Mademoiselle Mars at once communicated with the old Marquis, and endeavored to dissuade him from his purpose regarding his granddaughter; but he would not listen to her arguments, nor heed her counsels. At first, indeed, he could not be brought to believe that Margot herself could concur in them. It seemed incredible to him that a child of his house could so far forget her station and self-respect as to avow herself unequal to any sacrifice or any trial, much less one in itself the noblest and the highest of all martyrdom.
“You will see,” cried he, eagerly, “that it is you—not I—have mistaken her. These gauds of the fashionable world have no real attraction for her. Her heart is within those walls, where, in a few days more, she will herself be forever. She shall come and tell you so with her own lips.”
He sent a servant to call her, but she was not to be found! He searched everywhere, but in vain. Margot was gone! From that day forth she was not to be met with. No means were spared in prosecuting the search. Mademoiselle Mars herself, deeply afflicted at any inducements she might have held forth to her, joined eagerly in the pursuit, but to no end.
“But you cannot mean, Abbé,” said I, as he completed the narrative, “that to this very hour no trace of her has been discovered?”