Denise rose, and came slowly to me before them all, but no word passed her pale lips, and she did not raise her eyes to mine. She remained passive when in accordance with Madame's permission I stooped and kissed her cold cheek; it grew no warmer, her eyes did not kindle. Yet I was satisfied, more than satisfied; for as I leant over her I felt her little hands--little hands I longed to take in mine and shelter and protect--I felt them clutch and hold the front of my coat, as the child clings to its mother's neck. I passed my arm round her before them all, and so we stood at the foot of Madame's bed, and she looked at us.
She laughed gaily. "Poor little mouse!" she said. "She is shy yet. Be good to her, mon cher, she is a tender morsel, and--I don't feel well! I don't feel well," Madame repeated, abruptly breaking off, and lifting herself in bed, while one hand went with difficulty to her head. "I don't--what is it?" she continued, the colour visibly fading from her face and leaving it white and drawn, while fear leapt into her staring eyes. "What is it? Fetch--fetch some one, will you? The--the doctor! And Victor."
Denise slipped from my arm, and flew to her side. I stood a moment, then the surgeon touched my arm. "Go!" he muttered. "Go. Leave her to the women. It will be quickly over."
And so Madame St. Alais gave Mademoiselle to me at last; and the compact for our marriage, into which she had entered so many years before with my dead father, was fulfilled.
* * * * *
Madame died next morning, being taken not only from the evil to come, but from that which was then present, and roared and eddied through the streets of Nîmes round the unburied body of her son; for she died without awaking from the delirium which followed her hurt. I went in to see her lying dead and little changed; and in the quiet decorum of the lighted chamber I thought reverently of the change which one year--one brief year had made, coming at the end of fifty years of prosperity. It seemed pitiful to me then, as I stooped and kissed the waxen hand--very pitiful; now, knowing what the future had in store, remembering the twenty years of exile and poverty and tedium and hope deferred, that were to be the lot of so many of her friends, of so many of those who had graced her salons at St. Alais and Cahors, I think her happy. Possessed of energy as well as pride, a rare combination in our order, she and hers dared greatly and greatly lost; staked all and lost all. Yet better that, than the prison or the guillotine; or growing old and decrepit in a strange land, to return to a patrie that had long forgotten them; that stood in the roads and jeered at the old berlins and petticoats and headgear that were the fashion in the days of the Polignacs.
I have said that the riots in Nîmes lasted three days. On the last Buton came to me and told us we must go; that to avoid worse things we must leave the city without delay, or he and the more moderate party who had saved us would no longer be responsible. On this, Louis was for retiring to Montpellier, and thence to the émigrés at Turin; and for a few hours I was of the same mind, desiring most of all to place the women in safety.
I owe it to Buton that I did not take a step hard to recall, and of which I am sure that I should have repented later. He asked me bluntly whither I was going, and when I told him, set his back against the door. "God forbid!" he said. "Who go, go. Few will return."
I answered him with heat. "Nonsense!" I cried. "I tell you, within a year you will be on your knees to us to come back."
"Why?" he said.