Rousselin awaited them, with Jacques de La Perrière, and the pupils who had remained faithful to the house. But it would have been necessary to submit to long formalities, and the bodies were so dreadfully bruised that there was no time even to make them coffins. The hearse, followed by a great crowd of people deeply agitated with grief and anger, was driven to the common cemetery. There the martyrs lie side by side in one grave, with no shroud but their blood-stained vestments.
This undistinguished tomb ought not to be the last resting-place of the martyrs of Arcueil. Father Captier and his companions will sleep in the shadow of the school which their labor founded and their blood renders henceforth illustrious. Not only the religious who were the brethren of the victims, and the pupils who were their children, but all who care for religion and country, will come to pray at their sepulchre, and meditate upon the lessons of their death.
[120] The following is a list of the prisoners: In the Fort of Bicêtre.—Father Captier, prior of the school of Arcueil; Bourard, chaplain; Delhorme, regent of studies; Cotrault, procurator; Rousselin, censor; Chatagneret, professor—all professed religious of the Third (Teaching) Order of St. Dominic, except F. Bourard, who belonged to the Order of Preaching Friars; MM. Voland, Gauquelin, L’Abbé Grancolas, Edouard Bertrand, Rézillot, Petit, and Gauvin, assistant masters; MM. Aimé Gros, Marce, Cathala, Joseph Cheminal, Dintroz, Simon Brouho, Duché, Bussi, Schepens, Delaitre (father and son), and Paul Lair, servants of the school. In the Prison of Saint Lazare.—Mother Aloysia Ducos, superior of the Sisters of St. Martha; Sisters Elisabeth Poirier, Louise Marie Carriquiry, Louis de Gonzague Dorfin, and Mélanie Gatineaud; Mmes. Angèle Marce, Marguerite Cathala, Clara Delaitre, and the widow Guégon; Miles, Gertrude Faas, Catherine Morvan, and Louise Cathala (aged 8 years).
[121] In point of fact, the school was plundered on the 25th of May. There was no time to burn it.
[122] To this day the fate of M. Petit is not positively known. There is reason to believe that he escaped the first fusillade, but was recaptured by the federals and shot by them at one of the barricades. It is apparently of him that the Abbé Lesmayoux speaks in a letter to the Univers.
VEILED.
“Dilectus meus mihi, et ego illi.”[123] —Cant. ii. 16.
No bridegroom mine of change and death:
My orange-flowers shall never fade:
Immortal dews shall gem the wreath
When crowns of earth have all decayed.
No bride am I that plights her troth
With touch of doubt, or trust too fond;
And risks the present, wisely loath
To search too far the veiled beyond.