So fervent was her pleading and so profuse her tears, that M. de Nesmond consented to do all. His coach-and-six was got ready there and then. An hour before sunset the belfries of Havre came in sight, and as it was high tide, they drove right up to the harbour wharf.
The ship had just loosed her moorings, and was gliding out to sea. Clorinde could recognise Melladoro standing amid the passengers on deck. Half fainting, she stretched out her arms and called him in a piteous voice. Blushing, he sought to hide behind his companions, who all begged him to show himself. By means of a wherry Clorinde soon reached the frigate, and the good-natured sailors helped her to climb up the side of the vessel. But in her agitation and bewilderment her foot slipped, and she fell into the sea, whence she was soon rescued by several of the pluckiest of the crew.
As she was being removed to her carriage, the vessel sailed out of harbour. M. de Nesmond took a large house at Havre, in order to nurse her with greater convenience, and had to stop there for a whole month, his wife being at length brought back on a litter to Paris.
Her convalescence was but an illusion after all. Hardly had she reached home when fatal symptoms appeared; she felt that she must die, but showed little concern thereat. The portrait of the handsome Spaniard lay close beside her on her couch. She smiled at it, besought it to have pity on her loneliness, or scolded it bitterly for indifference, and for going away.
A short time before her death, she sent for her husband and her father, to whom she entrusted the care of her three children.
"Monsieur," said she to the President de Nesmond, "be kind to my son; he has a right to your name and arms, and though he is my living image, dearest Theodore is your son." Then turning to her father, who was weeping, she said briefly, "All that to-day remains to you of Clorinde are her two daughters.
"Pray love them as you loved me, and be more strict with them than you were with me. M. de Nesmond owes these orphans nothing. All that Melladoro owes them is affection. Tell him, I pray you, of my constancy and of my death."
Such was the sad end of a young wife who committed no greater crime than to love a man who was agreeable and after her own heart. M. de Nesmond was just enough to admit that, in ill-assorted unions, good sense or good nature must intervene, to ensure that the one most to be pitied receive indulgent treatment at the hands of the most culpable, if the latter be also the stronger of the two.
CHAPTER L.
Madame de Montespan's Children and Those of La Valliere.—Monsieur le
Dauphin.