The Last Duchess of Belgarde

by Molly Elliot Seawell

Trimousette was not always employed with poetry and music, however, but devised for herself many graceful and feminine employments, the duke watching her meanwhile with great delight. In the mornings she, like a good housewife, would sew with diligence, and patched and mended the duke beautifully. Her own wardrobe contained but two gowns, a black one, which she wore every day, and a white one, which she saved carefully for a certain great occasion likely to arrive any day; for although she and her duke lived in their two cells with love and peace, neither of them expected release except by the road which led to the guillotine in the Place de la Révolution. Robespierre had promised it, and in these matters he never broke his word. They faced the future with a composure which amazed themselves. The duke had the courage of a soldier who is always ready to answer the last roll call; Trimousette’s simple and sublime faith would have made her walk to the stake as calmly as to the guillotine.

It must not be supposed, however, that a man with red blood in him like Fernand, Duke of Belgarde, could see a new, sweet life of love opening before him, and then could always bring himself to resignation. He said little when these moods, like slaves in revolt, possessed him. At such times he would rise from his bed in the night, grinding his teeth and quivering with a dumb rage, and walk stealthily like a cunning madman, up and down, up and down, his narrow cell. Trimousette waking, would rise, and going to him in the darkness, gently recall him to his manhood, his fortitude, his heart of a soldier, and then with the earnestness of an angel and the simplicity of a child, she would tell him of the strange certainty she felt that they would not be separated even in the passage of the abyss called death. The duke, listening to her, and feeling the soft clasp of her arm about his neck, would find something like repose descend upon his tumultuous soul. At least, they would go together—that much of comfort was theirs. But it was only at times that this mood came upon the duke. Soldier-like, he had always looked upon death as an incident, and the only really important thing about it was how the thing could be done with the greatest ease and dignity.

“And surely,” Trimousette would say, drawing up her slight figure and showing the pride that was always alive, but secret in her heart, “to die for one’s loyalty is a very good way for the Duke and Duchess of Belgarde to make their exit.” Let no one feel sorry for Trimousette. She had passed through the Gate of Tears forever, and was already in that Garden of All Delight, which men call Perfect Love.

CHAPTER IX
TO-MORROW

EVERY day at noon the prisoners walked for an hour in the garden and courtyard of the Temple. They were quite cheerful, and sometimes even gay. Madame Guillotine was grown familiar to their thoughts. They paid each other compliments upon their courage, and made little jokes on very grim subjects. The honeymoon of the Duke and Duchess of Belgarde amused, but also touched their fellow prisoners. Among these was a pretty boy of sixteen, the Vicomte d’Aronda. His father had died, as had Victor, Count of Floramour, gallantly fighting in La Vendée. His mother and sister had perished in the embrace of Madame Guillotine. The boy alone remained. He felt himself every inch a man, and showed more than a man’s courage. He was immensely captivated by the Duke of Belgarde’s dashing air, which he still retained in spite of his patched coat and shabby hat, and when the duke introduced the little vicomte to Trimousette, the boy fell, if possible, more in love with her than with the duke. Every day during their hour of exercise in the garden he watched for them, and his boyish face reddened with pleasure when they would ask him to join them on their promenade up and down the broken flags. It diverted the duke to pretend to be jealous of so gallant a fellow as the little vicomte, and the boy himself, half bashful and half saucy, was charmed with the notion of being treated as a gay dog. Neither the duke nor Trimousette ever spoke to the boy of the fate that lay before him, as well as themselves, for he was so young—but sixteen years old—and the soul is not full fledged at sixteen. One day, however, the lad himself broached the subject.

“You see, madame and monsieur,” he said, quite serenely, “all the men of my line have known how to die, whether in their beds of old age, or falling from their horses in battle, and I, too, know how to die. I shall be perfectly easy, and not let the villains who execute me see that I care anything about it. My mother died as bravely as the Queen herself; so did my sister, only twenty years old; and I shall not disgrace them. But I should like very much to go the same day with you. It would seem quite lonely to walk in this garden without you.”

When he said this, a woman’s passion of pity for the boy overwhelmed Trimousette. She felt nothing like pity for her own fate or that of the man she loved; they had entered into Paradise before their time, that was all. But the boy was too young to have had even a glimpse of that Paradise. At least he would go in his white-souled youth, and this thought comforted Trimousette.