The Marquis waved his hand impatiently, saying, "I cannot--I will not talk of such things now. Leave me, Abbé, leave me! I can but grieve; there is no way that I can turn without encountering sorrow."
The Abbé turned and left him; and descending the steps into the gardens, he walked on in the calm sunshine, as tranquilly as if purity and holiness had dwelt within his breast. "I must bear this yet a while longer," he said to himself. "But now, if I could find some enthusiastic priest, full of wild eloquence, such as we have in Italy, to seize this deep moment of remorse, we might do much with him to make him abjure this pursuit; perhaps abjure the world! The foolish boy thinks that it was his hand that did it, and does not know that I fired at all, when his hand shook so that he could not well have struck him. Perhaps there may be such a priest as I need up there," he continued, looking towards Augoulême, "perhaps there may be such a priest up there, of the kind I want. Epernon has his fits of devotion too, I believe. At all events, I will go up and see. The madder the better for my purpose."
Thus saying he called some servants, ordered his horse, and, as soon as it was brought, rode away towards Augoulême.
[CHAP. V.]
Gaspar de Montsoreau remained in the same position in which the Abbé had left him for nearly an hour, and the struggle of the various passions which agitated his heart, were perhaps as terrible as any that had ever been known to human being. His situation, indeed, was one which exposed him more than most men are ever exposed, to the contention of the most opposite feelings. He had not been led gradually on, as many are, step by step, to evil; but he had been taken from the midst of warm and kindly feelings, from the practice of right, and an habitual course of calm and tranquil enjoyment, and by the mastery of one strong and violent passion had been plunged into the midst of crimes which had left anguish and remorse behind them.
Still, however, the passion which had at first led him astray, existed in all its fierceness and all its intensity; and, like some quiet field--from which the husbandman has been accustomed to gather yearly, in the calm sunshine, a rich and kindly harvest--when suddenly made the place of strife by contending armies, his heart, so tranquil and so happy not a year before, had now become the battle-place of remorse and love.
Sometimes the words of the Abbé came back upon his ear, urging him to abandon for ever, as a penance for his crime, the pursuit which had already led him to such awful deeds; but then again the thought of Marie de Clairvaut, of never beholding that beautiful being again, of yielding her for ever, perhaps, to the arms of others, came across his brain, and almost drove him mad.
Then would rush remorse again upon his heart, the features of his brother rose up before him, his graceful form seemed to move within his sight; the frank warm-hearted, kindly smile, that had ever greeted him when they met, was now painted by memory to his eye; and many a trait of generous kindness, many a noble, many an endearing act, the words and jests of boyhood and infancy, the long remembered sports of early years, the accidents, the adventures, the tender and twining associations of youth and happiness, forgotten in the strife of passion and the contention of rivalry, now came back, as vividly as the things of yesterday--came back, alas! now that death had ended the struggle, rendered the deeds of the past irreparable, thrown the pall of remorse over the last few months, and left memory alone to deck the tomb of the dead with bright flowers gathered from their spring of life.
It was too much to bear: he turned back again to the words, not of consolation but of incitement, which the Abbé had spoken to him. He tried to think it was folly to regret what had been done; he tried to recollect that it was in a scene of contention, and in moments of strife, that his brother had fallen; he strove to persuade himself that Marie de Clairvaut had been under his care and guidance and direction, and that his brother Charles had had no right even to attempt to take her out of his hands. He laboured, in short, to steel his heart; to render it as hard iron, in order to resist the things that it had to endure. He sought anxiously to rouse it into activity; and he tried to fix his mind still upon the thoughts of winning Marie de Clairvaut. He resolved, at whatever price, by whatever sacrifice, to gain her, to possess her, to make her his own beyond recall: with the eagerness of passion and the recklessness of remorse, he determined to pursue his course, trusting, as many have idly trusted, that he should induce the woman, whose affections and feelings he forced, to love the man to whose passions she was made a sacrifice.
The struggle was still going on, the voice of conscience was raising itself loudly from time to time, memory was doing her work, and passion was opposing all, when, without hearing any step, or knowing that any one had arrived at the house, he felt a hand quietly laid upon his arm, and starting up with a feeling almost of terror, which was unusual to him, he beheld the dark and sinister, though handsome, countenance of Villequier.