"I knew from Adhémar that his family lived in the neighborhood of Toulouse; they were uncles and aunts, all proud of their rank and titles, and they did not condescend to answer the letters I wrote them. At last, someone who was going to that part of the country was obliging enough to make inquiries of several persons, and they told him that Monsieur Adhémar had not been seen by his relations, but that they took little interest in his fate, for they knew that, heedless of his name and his birth, he had contracted in Paris a liaison unworthy of him; and if he did not break off that liaison, he would never be received again by his noble family. That is all that I learned concerning him whom I loved better than my life. Ah! if it had not been for my daughter, his disappearance would have killed me; but what would have become of my little Agathe, without friends or kindred on earth? I felt that I must live for her, for her whom her father loved so dearly! And that is what I did; I lived, but I have never been comforted!—Alas! suppose that he died far away from us—unable to embrace us once more, to bid us a last farewell, and above all, to ensure the future welfare of his daughter! Poor Adhémar! think what his anguish must have been, his despair, at the thought that he left us here in misery! Oh! that idea haunts me incessantly and intensifies the bitterness of my regrets."
This conversation was often renewed between the new friends, for Madame Montoni was never tired of talking of her Agathe's father. In those soothing outpourings of her soul, she concealed nothing from Honorine, whereas she kept one thing secret from her daughter.
Several years passed; Madame Montoni, exhausted by toil and grief, soon lost her little remaining strength. Feeling that she must soon say farewell to life, she placed in Honorine's hand the hand of her daughter, then twelve years of age, and said to little Agathe:
"Honorine will take my place with you; love her as you loved your mother. Heaven has at least vouchsafed that I should leave with you a sister, a friend! Some day, my daughter, she will tell you what your mother has never dared to tell you; and you will forgive your mother, because she loved you dearly and has suffered much for your sake. Now I am going to join my Adhémar, your father, and from above we will both watch over our child. But if fate has decreed that he is not dead, and that you are to see him again some day, oh! tell him that, until my last hour, his image was always here—in my heart!"
Agathe's tears and Honorine's prayers were powerless to suspend the decree of destiny! Madame Montoni closed her eyes forever.
"Death's rigors have no like;
Vain our entreaties all;
His tyrant hand will strike;
Our plaints on deaf ears fall."
After Madame Montoni's death, Honorine took Agathe with her, and from that moment they were never separated.
That which at first was only the affection of a guardian soon became sisterly affection; for, by the time she was fifteen, Agathe had become a sister to her companion, who was then but twenty-seven; time abolished the distance that it had at first set between them. The girl's tastes and pleasures were no longer those of a child, but were identical with those of the young woman, who was overjoyed to find a congenial companion in her to whom at first she had been only a second mother.
But Agathe had not forgotten the last words her own mother had said to her. There was a secret which Madame Montoni had confided to Honorine, but which she had not dared to disclose to her daughter. How could that kind and loving mother have feared to tell her daughter anything? Might she not always have felt quite certain that that daughter would never blame any act of hers?