“I wish to God that I had never gone!” exclaimed the Vicomte passionately.
Gilbert slipped his right hand into his. “My dear boy, don’t you know . . . that you saved us? Now you can hold the place . . . till Charette comes up. . . .” His voice failed suddenly, and he shut his eyes with a little sigh as though he were tired, and the last word said.
But Louis was clutching the cold hand to his breast as he bent over him. “O Gilbert—don’t go! For God’s sake, don’t go! . . . I want you . . . I can’t let you go now. . . .”
A gust of wind swept into the hall, and the candle flames bent before it. The priest, kneeling motionless on the other side, with a hand on Château-Foix’ left wrist, began to take his crucifix from his sash.
Louis saw it, and stretched out a barring arm. “No—you shall not put it there!” he said fiercely. “He is not dead—he is not going to die!” His look at M. des Graves was defiance.
For all answer the priest put the little crucifix, not on Gilbert’s breast, but into Louis’ own hand. “Lay it there yourself, my dear child, when it is time,” he said, and in the inexorable tenderness of his gaze the young man saw that the end was indeed come.
Suddenly Gilbert reopened his eyes, and looked slowly from one to the other. Louis felt the hand between his own contract a little, and heard a whisper of his name. He stooped and kissed the Marquis on the mouth. The tears were running down his face like rain. “Good-bye, Gilbert, good-bye!” he whispered brokenly. “Good-bye . . . good-bye. . . .”
“Lift him up a little,” came the priest’s voice, quiet and unshaken, and Louis raised his dying cousin in his arms till his head rested on his own shoulder. Everybody in the hall was kneeling round, and many were sobbing unrestrainedly. M. des Graves began the commendatory prayer; and in the middle of it Gilbert moved his head a little on Louis’ breast, looked at the priest, smiled very faintly, and died without a struggle.
In the low murmur of prayers rising round them Louis knelt on, holding Gilbert’s body in his arms. At last, kissing him again, he laid him gently down. Still looking at him as he lay there, he groped with one hand for the little crucifix which he had put on the floor beside him, and, finding it, laid it on his cousin’s wounded breast and folded his hands over it. Then he got rather suddenly to his feet, saying aloud (though he did not know it): “Is that all?”
And then he saw, standing by the curtained doorway, grim and blood-stained, his drawn sword in his hand, the Chevalier de Charette, and behind him other faces.