"As for you, my dear and faithful André," exclaimed M. d'Egmont, "it grieves me to leave you alone in this world where you have shared my sorrows. You have promised me to pass the rest of your days with the D'Habervilles, who will care for your old age tenderly. You know that after your death the poor are to be our heirs."
"My dear master," said Francœur, sobbing, "the poor will not have long to wait for their inheritance."
Having bid farewell to all his friends, "the good gentleman" asked the priest to say the prayers for the dying. Just at the words, "Partez âme Chrétienne, au nom du Dieu tout-puissant qui vous a créé," he breathed his last. Sterne would have said:
"The recording angel of the court of heaven shed a tear upon the follies of his youth, and blotted them out forever." The angels are more compassionate than men, who neither forget nor forgive the faults of others!
André Francœur was struck with paralysis on the day of his master's burial, and survived him but three weeks.
When Jules had said to his sister: "If I loved an English girl and she would have me, I would marry her as readily as one of my own countrywomen," Blanche had been far from suspecting her brother's real intentions. The truth was that Jules, on his voyage across the Atlantic, had made the acquaintance of a young English girl of great beauty. A second Saint-Preux, Jules had given her lessons in something more than French grammar during a passage that lasted two months. He had shown excellent taste. The young girl, in addition to her beauty, possessed the qualities to inspire a true passion.
All obstacles being at length overcome, and the consent of both families obtained, in the following year Jules married the fair daughter of Albion, who soon won the hearts of all about her.
Uncle Raoul, always bitter against the English on account of the leg which he had lost in Acadia, but too well bred to fail in the proprieties, used at first to shut himself up whenever he wanted to swear comfortably at the compatriots of his lovely niece; but by the end of a month she had entirely captivated him, whereupon he suddenly suppressed his oaths, to the great benefit of his soul and of the pious ears which he had scandalized.
"That rascal of a Jules," said Uncle Raoul, "showed very good taste in wedding this young English woman. His Holiness the Pope of old was quite right when he said that these young islanders would be angels if only they were Christians; non angli, sed angeli fuissent, si essent Christiani."