“My God! my God!” cried the Countess, distracted by that cruel uncertainty.
“You do well to appeal to Him. Save the soul! I repeat, save the soul! Your beautiful body (that earthly idol), and your sacrilegious existence have ended forever. This temporal life, these earthly joys, that prosperity and beauty, that luxury and fortune which you have striven so hard to preserve, the riches you have usurped, the air, the sun, the world you have known till now, all are lost to you, they have even now disappeared. To-morrow nothing will remain but dust and darkness, vanity and corruption, solitude and oblivion; the soul alone survives, Countess. Think of your soul.”
“Who are you?” softly asked the dying woman, gazing at him in astonishment. “I have known you before now. You hate me, it is you who kill me. Ah!”
At this instant Death placed his white hand upon her head, and said:—“Finish, Tito, the last hour approaches.”
“I do not wish her to die,” replied Tito, “even yet she may amend; even yet remedy all the evil she has done. Save her body, and I will answer for her soul.”
“Conclude, Tito! conclude; the last hour is about to strike.”
“Poor woman!” murmured the youth, looking at her with compassion.
“You pity me,” said the dying woman with ineffable tenderness. “I who never acknowledged you, never loved you. Never have I felt as now for you. Pity me. Tell me. My heart softens at the sound of your sad voice.”
And it was true.
The Countess exalted by the terror of that supreme moment, suffering remorse, fearing punishment, and deprived of all that constituted her pride and pleasure upon earth, commenced to feel the first breathings of a soul, which until now had remained lost and silent in the depths of her iniquity; a soul always insulted, but full of patience and heroism; a soul, in fact, to be compared to the sad daughter of criminal parents, who, quiet and silent, shrinks from sight and weeps alone, until one day, when at the first sign of repentance that she observes, recovers her spirit, rushes to their arms and lets them hear her pure, sweet voice—song of the lark, music of heaven, which appears to welcome the dawn of virtue after the darkness of sin.