Pascal looked at her, listened to her, and a sudden light broke in upon his mind. She loved him, this miserable woman; she had always loved him. He thought of her thirty years of blind devotion, her mute adoration, when she had waited upon him, on her knees, as it were, when she was young; her secret jealousy of Clotilde later; what she must have secretly suffered all that time! And she was here on her knees now again, beside his deathbed; her hair gray; her eyes the color of ashes in her pale nun-like face, dulled by her solitary life. And he felt that she was unconscious of it all; that she did not even know with what sort of love she loved him, loving him only for the happiness of loving him: of being with him, and of waiting on him.
Tears rose to Pascal’s eyes; a dolorous pity and an infinite human tenderness flowed from his poor, half-broken heart.
“My poor girl,” he said, “you are the best of girls. Come, embrace me, as you love me, with all your strength.”
She, too, sobbed. She let her gray head, her face worn by her long servitude, fall on her master’s breast. Wildly she kissed him, putting all her life into the kiss.
“There, let us not give way to emotion, for you see we can do nothing; this will be the end, just the same. If you wish me to love you, obey me. Now that I am better, that I can breathe easier, do me the favor to run to Dr. Ramond’s. Waken him and bring him back with you.”
She was leaving the room when he called to her, seized by a sudden fear.
“And remember, I forbid you to go to inform my mother.”
She turned back, embarrassed, and in a voice of entreaty, said:
“Oh, monsieur, Mme. Félicité has made me promise so often—”
But he was inflexible. All his life he had treated his mother with deference, and he thought he had acquired the right to defend himself against her in the hour of his death. He would not let the servant go until she had promised him that she would be silent. Then he smiled once more.