To Monsieur l’Abbe Carlos Herrera.
“MY DEAR PROTECTOR,—Will you not suppose that gratitude is
stronger in me than love, when you see that the first use I make
of the power of expressing my thoughts is to thank you, instead of
devoting it to pouring forth a passion that Lucien has perhaps
forgotten. But to you, divine man, I can say what I should not
dare to tell him, who, to my joy, still clings to earth.
“Yesterday’s ceremony has filled me with treasures of grace, and I
place my fate in your hands. Even if I must die far away from my
beloved, I shall die purified like the Magdalen, and my soul will
become to him the rival of his guardian angel. Can I ever forget
yesterday’s festival? How could I wish to abdicate the glorious
throne to which I was raised? Yesterday I washed away every stain
in the waters of baptism, and received the Sacred Body of my
Redeemer; I am become one of His tabernacles. At that moment I
heard the songs of angels, I was more than a woman, born to a life
of light amid the acclamations of the whole earth, admired by the
world in a cloud of incense and prayers that were intoxicating,
adorned like a virgin for the Heavenly Spouse.
“Thus finding myself worthy of Lucien, which I had never hoped to
be, I abjured impure love and vowed to walk only in the paths of
virtue. If my flesh is weaker than my spirit, let it perish. Be
the arbiter of my destiny; and if I die, tell Lucien that I died
to him when I was born to God.”
Lucien looked up at the Abbe with eyes full of tears.
“You know the rooms fat Caroline Bellefeuille had, in the Rue Taitbout,” the Spaniard said. “The poor creature, cast off by her magistrate, was in the greatest poverty; she was about to be sold up. I bought the place all standing, and she turned out with her clothes. Esther, the angel who aspired to heaven, has alighted there, and is waiting for you.”
At this moment Lucien heard his horses pawing the ground in the courtyard; he was incapable of expressing his admiration for a devotion which he alone could appreciate; he threw himself into the arms of the man he had insulted, made amends for all by a look and the speechless effusion of his feelings. Then he flew downstairs, confided Esther’s address to his tiger’s ear, and the horses went off as if their master’s passion had lived in their legs.
The next day a man, who by his dress might have been mistaken by the passers-by for a gendarme in disguise, was passing the Rue Taitbout, opposite a house, as if he were waiting for some one to come out; he walked with an agitated air. You will often see in Paris such vehement promenaders, real gendarmes watching a recalcitrant National Guardsman, bailiffs taking steps to effect an arrest, creditors planning a trick on the debtor who has shut himself in, lovers, or jealous and suspicious husbands, or friends doing sentry for a friend; but rarely do you meet a face portending such coarse and fierce thoughts as animated that of the gloomy and powerful man who paced to and fro under Mademoiselle Esther’s windows with the brooding haste of a bear in its cage.
At noon a window was opened, and a maid-servant’s hand was put out to push back the padded shutters. A few minutes later, Esther, in her dressing-gown, came to breathe the air, leaning on Lucien; any one who saw them might have taken them for the originals of some pretty English vignette. Esther was the first to recognize the basilisk eyes of the Spanish priest; and the poor creature, stricken as if she had been shot, gave a cry of horror.
“There is that terrible priest,” said she, pointing him out to Lucien.
“He!” said Lucien, smiling, “he is no more a priest than you are.”
“What then?” she said in alarm.
“Why, an old villain who believes in nothing but the devil,” said Lucien.