"Shall I send for a priest, Sir?" asked Helen.
"Not yet," said Monsieur de Liancourt, "for I have much to say. Bring me my cross of St. John. Lay it on my breast, that I may die under the standard of my salvation." Helen hurried to get it, where it lay with the armour and clothes in which he had been dressed, and placed it gently on his bosom a he told her. The old man gazed wistfully in her face for an instant, and then said, "I am going, Helen--fast. If I had lived, I would have been a father to you. Estoc, will you protect her--defend her?--Do you promise me?"
"I do from my heart," replied Estoc. "As long as I live she shall never want a home to receive her, or an arm to do her right."
"Kiss the cross!" said the old Commander; and, bending down, the good soldier pressed his lips upon it, as it lay upon his dying leader's bosom.
"So much for that," said the Commander. "When I am gone, Estoc, give her all that I have brought with me.--You, I have provided for, long ago.--See me buried as a soldier should be. Lay me before the altar at Marzay, and bid the priest say masses for my soul.--Now give me the papers that I may explain them well."
Estoc proceeded to the corner of the room in which the old commander's garments had been laid down in a heap; and searched for some minutes before he could discover the packet of papers for which he was looking. He found it at length, and, turning round, approached the bed-side where Helen de la Tremblade sat watching the wounded man. She held his hand in hers, she gazed upon him eagerly with her beautiful lips slightly open, showing the fine pearly teeth within; and, as the light of the lamp fell upon her, she was certainly as fair a creature as ever man beheld; but there was a look of anxious fear in her eyes that startled Estoc, and made him hurry his pace. The eyes of the old commander were closed, and Helen whispered, "He has had a terrible shudder."
"Here are the papers, Sir," said Estoc.
The old man made no answer, but by a heavy sigh.
"Send for a priest, quick," cried Estoc; and Helen running hastily from the room, woke one of the soldiers in the kitchen, and dispatched him to the village in haste. When she returned to the chamber, however, all was still: and, approaching with her light foot the bed-side, she saw Estoc with his arms folded across his chest, and his eyes, glistening with an unwonted tear, fixed upon the countenance of his old friend and leader, from which all expression seemed to have passed away. She listened, but could hear no breath. The lips were motionless; the breast had ceased to heave; the hand, which he had lately held in her own, had fallen languidly on the bed; the other, by a last movement, had been brought to rest upon the cross which lay upon his bosom. Life had passed away, apparently in an instant, and the sufferings of the stout old soldier were at an end.
The moment after several of the men, who had been awakened by a voice calling to one of them to seek a priest, crept into the room to see their good leader once more before he died; and Estoc, brushing away the moisture from his eyes with the back of his hand, turned towards them, saying, "You may come forward.--You cannot disturb him now. He is gone; and a better heart, a stouter hand, a kinder spirit, never lived, my friends. Few there are like him left; and we at least never shall see such another. God have mercy on his soul, and on ours too."