"Let us depart, Bertha!"
Mademoiselle Plouernel and Nominoë Lebrenn left the hall of the manor of Mezlean to descend into the underground passage.
The sky above is beautifully serene. The dew of night impregnates the atmosphere of this delightful summer's night with a delicate freshness. The approaching dawn is paling the stars, and tingeing the eastern horizon purple. The silence of the solitude is alone disturbed by the imposing murmur of the sea, calmly and sonorously rolling upon the shore where rise the stones of Karnak, sacred stones of ancient Gaul! gigantic pillars of a temple that has the firmament for its dome! Their ten long avenues converge towards the colossal sacrificial altar. Glory to the God of Gaul!
The horizon is reddened by the first fires of day. The crests of the long stretched waves of the azure ocean become transparently ruddy. The sands of the beach glisten like golden dust. The sun flares up; its rays seem to envelop the sacrificial altar with a dazzling aureola; above, the birds are singing their morning symphony.
On the altar, lifeless, close to each other, their arms interlaced in a supreme and chaste embrace, lie Bertha of Plouernel and Nominoë Lebrenn. Their beauty survives their death throes. With a smile upon their lips and their eyes half shut, they seem to slumber wrapped in peaceful repose. Their immortal soul has left their earthly bodies; it has fled to reincarnate itself in a new body, a body appropriate to the world that is to be their dwelling place, like the traveler who dons lighter clothing when journeying in a milder climate.
EPILOGUE.
Bertha and Nominoë live at this hour, body and soul, spirit and matter, in those starry worlds where none of us on earth has been, where we all will go—after having accomplished our mission on earth.
My son believed I was dead, having, indeed been left for dead at Nantes by the soldiers against whom I defended myself to the utmost. Even my host took me for dead. He was engaged in procuring my burial when a movement that I made revealed to him that I still lived. Nursed by my friend with fraternal care, I recovered from my wounds and remained concealed in my place of refuge until the day when I embarked secretly at Nantes on an English vessel that took me to London. From there I crossed over into Holland, where a shipowner entrusted me with one of his vessels. Finding myself exiled from France, I requested my relative at Vannes, with whom the narratives and relics of my family were left for safe-keeping, to forward them to me by a Breton vessel. I found the relics increased by Tankeru's blacksmith's hammer and the archives by the sheets of paper left by Nominoë. With the aid of the letter and of my own recollections, I, Salaun Lebrenn, completed the preceding story, which I joined to those left to me by my ancestors, and which I shall transmit to my descendants.
Alas! Perhaps I must blame myself for the death of my son. I neglected to fortify his mind against suicide by teaching him that it is not allowed to us to forestall the hour of our deliverance, and that those who endeavor to escape the trials of this life are punished by God either by separating them, if they expected to be united after death, or by condemning them to reincarnation on earth.
Alas! my expiation of the negligence has continued during these many years of exile. May the trials that I underwent disarm the just anger of God, and soften the punishment reserved for my son, before his final union in the spirit world with her who loved him to the point of dying with him.