“No,” said he, calmly, “I have but one thing which wants relief; it is here.”
He pressed his hand to his heart as he spoke, while such a look of misery as crossed his features I never beheld.
“Your heart—”
“Is broken,” said he, with a sigh. For some minutes he said nothing, then whispered: “Take my pocket-book from beneath my pillow; yes, that 's it. There is a letter you 'll give my sister; you 'll promise me that? Well, the other is for Lecharlier, the chef of the Polytechnique at Paris; that is for you,—you must be un élève there. There are some five or six thousand francs,—it 's all I have now: they are yours; Marie is already provided for. Tell her—But no; she has forgiven me long since,—I feel it. You 'll one day win your grade,—high up; yes, you must do so. Perhaps it may be your fortune to speak with General Bonaparte; if so, I beg you say to him, that when Charles de Meudon was dying, in exile, with but one friend left of all the world, he held this portrait to his lips, and with his last breath he kissed it.”
The fervor of the action drew the blood to his face and temples, which as suddenly became pale again. A shivering ran through his limbs; a quick heaving of his bosom; a sigh; and all was still. He was dead!
The stunning sense of deep affliction is a mercy from on high. Weak human faculties, long strained by daily communing with grief, would fall into idiocy were their acuteness not blunted and their perception rendered dull. It is for memory to trace back through the mazes of misery the object of our sorrow, as the widow searches for the corpse of him she loved amid the slain upon the battlefield.
I sat benumbed with sorrow, a vague desire for the breaking day my only thought. Already the indistinct glimmerings of morning were visible, when I heard the sounds of men marching along the road towards the house. I could mark, by the clank of their firelocks and their regular step, that they were soldiers. They halted at the door of the cabin, whence a loud knocking now proceeded.
“Halloo, there!” said a voice, whose tones seemed to sink into my very heart; “halloo, Peter! get up and open the door.”
“What's the matter?” cried the old man, starting up, and groping his way towards the door.
The sound of several voices and the noise of approaching footsteps drowned the reply; and the same instant the door of the little room in which I sat opened, and a sergeant entered.