It was cloudy over Paris, but the clouds were breaking, and the piercing light of a star, here and there, shone through the rents. The moon was rising, too, and her light touched the clouds.
Ah! this must be Villeneuve St. Georges, this long street to which the trees and hedgerows have given place.
I know the road to Etiolles well, but to-night it all seemed changed.
We passed hamlets and villages, and now at last we were nearing Etiolles. I could tell it by the big houses on either side of the road, houses with walled-in gardens and grass lawns, where young ladies played croquet in the long summer afternoons, so that a person on the road could hear the click of the balls and the laughter of the players. The moon had fully risen now, casting her light on the houses, the walls, the vineyards rolling towards the river, the trees and shrubs.
Suddenly, as though an adamantine door had been flung across the road barring our way the carriage stopped; one of the horses had fallen as if felled by an axe. The pole was broken. Joubert was on his knees by the head of the fallen horse, dark blood was streaming from its nostrils in the vague moonlight that was now touching the white road.
Inexorable Fate.
We were two miles from the château gates, but across the fields and through the forest of Senart there away straight as the crow dies to the Pavilion.
I do not remember leaving Joubert; suddenly the fields were around me and I was running. My mind driven to madness had matched itself against fate. "I will conquer you," it cried. "No dead fate shall oppose my living will. Let the past be gone. I have sinned, but I have suffered. If she is dead I will fling myself after her and seize her soul in my arms forever."
"You are mine—living or dead, you are mine."