The priest went round and took down the portrait. The brilliants of its setting were clogged with something dried and brown. He put it into Louis’ hand, and the fingers closed round it, but the hand itself, inexpressibly wasted, seemed to be incapable of further effort, and remained lying there inert. Louis sighed, and murmured something inaudible; then, with a visible effort, he said slowly and distinctly, “Thank you, Father. That is all. . . .” And, adding much more faintly, “I am very tired,” he closed his eyes again.
“My child,” said M. des Graves, bending close above him, “it may yet be God’s purpose that you should live. We do not know, and in our ignorance we can do nothing. But you submit yourself to His Will, do you not, Louis? . . . And now, my dear child, shall I give you the last sacraments?”
The young man, without opening his eyes, made a little motion of the head, and M. des Graves, going to the door, called for Marie-Pierre and the sacred oils.
The beautiful and significant rite went forward, the young Breton assisting. At its beginning Louis was still conscious, but when M. des Graves came to anoint his palms, and tried very gently to disengage the miniature from his right hand, he evidently did not know what was happening, and seemed to wish to retain it. By the end he had sunk quietly into insensibility.
“You cannot give him le bon Dieu, mon père,” said Marie-Pierre in a whisper. “He is going.” Crossing himself, he dropped to his knees.
But M. des Graves, with his hand on the Vicomte’s wrist, said nothing for a moment. The tiny thread of life, flickering under his fingers, woke in him a hope disproportionate to its frail pulsations. He listened to his heart, lifted an eyelid.
“I think he may at least last the night,” he said quietly, “and I should like to stay with him. I have known him since he was a boy.”
Fantastic shadows were cast about the loft by the wavering rush-light, as, powerless to aid, M. des Graves watched there over the existence which seemed likely to go out even before the short-lived candle. But, listening to the shallow, fluttering breathing from the bed, the priest thanked God that whether Louis was to live or die, he had been able to come to him in his need. If the name of another Chantemerle—the last—was to be added to the roll-call of the noble army of martyrs, for that too he would thank Him; and, most of all, that the breath of the furnace, passing over the nature that was too hard and the nature that was too volatile, had proved them both of the same metal. So, diverse as they were in all else, the same august altar had claimed them at last, Gilbert in his hasty grave at Chantemerle, and Louis, the gay and irresponsible, lying here wrecked and dying from the very circumstances which had brought his undiscovered fine qualities to the birth. For in the hardships and disasters of the campaign beyond the Loire, Louis had displayed, to M. des Graves’ eyes, a more brilliant courage than when, at La Rochejaquelein’s side, he had dashed without a single follower on to the bridge at Château-Gontier, and a heroism of endurance the more wonderful because nothing in his character or breeding had seemed to promise it.
Well, it was over now, that and the long weeks of illness, of pain and of insufficient care. God was good; He knew best. Often He vouchsafed the crown of martyrdom to the young and withheld it from the old. His own had waited for him long at Nantes in the cold waters of the Loire, in the fusillades at the quarries. But when he had thought to grasp it, it was withdrawn from him.