"The women who love me now!" he said to himself. "Who are they? Who? My mother and--and--Emérance. Emérance who is not fifty paces away from me, Emérance who dies by my side to-morrow, yet whom I may not see until, to-morrow, we stand on the same scaffold together. And then but for a moment ere the axe falls."
"Whom I may not see until to-morrow," he repeated. "Not until to-morrow."
And again he said to himself, "Not until to-morrow," while adding: "And there are so many long hours until three o'clock to-morrow!"
As though to corroborate this thought there boomed out the tones of the prison clock striking midnight, the sound being followed an instant later by the deeper boom of the great bell of Notre Dame and then by that of the other clocks in the city.
"Midnight," De Beaurepaire said. "Midnight. Fifteen hours yet of life, fifteen hours spent apart from her! And she here, close by. Ah! it is hard."
He rose from the chair he sat in and went across to the other side of the great fireplace where, in another chair, was seated the Père Bourdaloue reading his breviary. Some time before this the priest had prayed with him and would do so again at intervals during the night, while later--before the end came to-morrow--he would confess and absolve the condemned man as his brother priest would confess and absolve the others, with the exception of Van den Enden, who was resolute not to see either priest or minister of any faith. Now, however, as has been said, the good man read his breviary.
"Father," the condemned man said, standing before him and waiting to speak until he looked up from his book, "Father, help me to see her. I must see her ere we meet there. Below. Help me to bid her a last, a long farewell."
"To see her, my son! The woman who has brought you to this?"
"Nay! nay! Never. None has brought me to this but my own self; my own wickedness, my treachery and ambition. Above all, not she. Instead, her undoing lies heavy at my charge. Had she not loved me with a love passing the love of women, she might have gone free, have escaped. But--but--she grappled herself to me out of that great love and, as I fell, she fell with me. Let me see her once more. Here. To-night."
"What has this love of yours and hers been, Louis de Beaurepaire? The love that honours a woman in its choice, or the mad frenzy, the wild passion, the evil desires that sweep all boundaries and obstacles and laws aside even as the torrent sweeps aside all that stands in its way?"