“There’s a Divinity that shapes our ends.”
“It is enough: my son is yet alive; I shall see him before I die.” These were the first words Madame de Talmont found voice to falter, as, leaning heavily on the arm of Clémence, she traversed the short distance between the hospital and the house where they dwelt.
The unutterable joy and thankfulness that filled the soul of Clémence was not unmixed with fear. With the speechless, agonizing dread of a loving heart, she trembled for the treasure left her still. If, after this re-awakening of their hopes, the only tidings that had to reach them were of a nameless grave at Vilna, how could her mother bear the blow? Surely, had he recovered, Henri would have written to them ere this. She could not help concluding, from the young Russian’s narrative, that he had met with sufficient kindness in the house of his captivity to have rendered it easy for him to do so.
But she could not bear to communicate her misgivings. She led her mother to the pleasant room they shared together, and persuaded her to lie down and rest, taking upon herself the task of relating what they had heard to La Tante, as they both called Madame de Salgues.
During the long night that followed, bringing sleep to neither, mother and daughter had abundant leisure for the scattered, incoherent, “discursive talk” beneath which overwhelming emotions usually conceal, because they cannot adequately express, themselves. Morning had almost come when Madame de Talmont asked, suddenly raising her head from a hot, tear-stained pillow, “Clémence, what about a ransom? We have that to think of now.”
“I have been thinking of it, mother,” Clémence answered gently. “But peace will be made—must be made shortly. May we not conclude that something will be arranged in it about the prisoners?”
“If peace were to be made with any one save Napoleon, I should say yes. Some men would think of their followers, and try to make terms for them, were they themselves on the way to the scaffold. But this Corsican adventurer has as little idea of knightly honour as of Christian grace; while who can tell yet what is to come after him? No, Clémence; you may depend upon it those poor captives have no friends save God and their own kinsfolk.—What can we do? Not even a jewel of any value is left us now.”
“But, mother, we have still our little pittance in the Rentes. Now that La Tante supplies all our real needs, we can sell what is there.”
“Ah, that is not enough, I fear, since the Rentes have fallen so low. Yet it is all we have.—Clémence, I do not like Russians; in fact, as a general thing, I have quite a prejudice against them.”