Julie strove to speak, but terror left her no voice. At length she cried, "Indeed, indeed, I am innocent!"
"Art thou a liar too?" cried Villars, casting his cloak over her head, and raising his hand. "Thus I wipe out your infamy!"
He plunged the dagger in her bosom--he raised it again, but no--he could not repeat it--there was a faint smothered cry--a shudder like the flutter of a dying bird, and then it lay a cold inanimate weight upon his bosom--It was done! But then the implacable unyielding spirit which had thus far sustained him forsook him for a moment, and he stood stupified, without thought, without feeling, without remembrance.
"I have done my duty!" he cried at last, and hurrying down to the banks of the river, descended to the very edge, and laid his lifeless burden in the water--gently, and cautiously, as if he were afraid of waking her. He gazed upon her--smote his hand upon his breast. "I have done my duty!" he said, "I have done my duty!" But hell was in his heart, and he fled.
When the Union American merchantman was lost on her passage from Havre to Charleston, there was one man who refused to enter any of the boats. He had taken his passage at Havre the very day the ship sailed, and, during the five days which elapsed between her leaving the port and her being wrecked, he was never heard to proffer a word to any one. He passed the days and the greater part of the nights, in walking backwards and forwards, with his eyes fixed upon the deck, and at that awful moment, when tempest and destruction surrounded them all, the deadly strife within his own bosom seemed to have rendered him insensible to the war of elements without.
Some one kindly pressed him to enter one of the boats. "Leave me, leave me," said he in French; "my grave is made!"
God knows whether it was he, but the passengers who escaped represent him as of the same age and form as Armand Villars.
On entering the cemetery of Père la Chaise, proceed directly to the foot of the first hill, and, turning into the alley to the left, you will find a plain obelisk of white marble, without epitaph or inscription, except the simple name "Julie!" It stands in a little garden of flowers, enclosed with a fence of iron; and I have myself seen a young officer, with more than one decoration on his breast, removing those that were withered, and binding fresh wreaths round its little boundary. It never wanted flowers in any season, for he came every day to deck it himself, though the colour gradually forsook his cheek, and pale corroding care was marked in every feature. One day he came no more, and shortly after he was laid in the earth beside her he loved. But before he died, he expressly forbade his name also to be inscribed on the monument which he had raised to his lost Julie.