“Paule, she is setting us a splendid example of heroism and self-sacrifice. May we never forget it! And if later on, in many years to come, we have occasion to imitate her may her memory still be present with us. Oh, may the child who is coming to us be like her!”
Paule was listening to him more calmly, and he added: “May God protect both our child and her whom we have left behind with a broken heart!”
“Yes, I will pray,” she said. “It was God who gave my mother the resignation that she tried to implant in me.”
In her young life, she had known many hours of anguish and mourning; but she had never known a more painful one than this. She thought she tasted the bitterness of death, yet in reality her life was stirring to its inmost depths. Her love was purified, all unknown to her, in that divine flame of maternal sacrifice of which she was more and more to appreciate the value.
As the railway passed in front of the oak wood which is neighbor to Le Maupas, Jean and Paule looked at the familiar landscape through the window. The tree-branches bore snowflakes for leaves, their whiteness tinted by the setting sun. On the vine-row hung a lacework of frost.
Here it was, and here alone, that Paule had learned to know life, death, and love. She thought of the proud, passionate, young girl, whose boast was the care with which she watched over her mother.
“Kiss me,” she cried to her husband. “I have so much need of love to be able to go away from here!”
Jean took her in his arms. And the kiss they gave each other spread a sacred thrill through their veins; for to that union of their body and soul they added the filial devotion of the past and that mysterious hope for the future which made their lives so much fuller and gave an immortal meaning to their love.
CHAPTER XI
PEACE
Madame Guibert rose with difficulty from the bench on which she had seated herself to weep. She saw a few strangers passing hurriedly and wished to hide her sorrow.