“‘Ah! from Gabrielle’ [Fleurange], she exclaimed. ‘The very letter I was expecting to-day.’
“She opened it and hastily ran over its contents. ‘Very well done—very,’ she said. ‘Nothing could be more natural. She hit upon the very best thing to say.... Here, Adelardi,’ continued she, throwing him the letter, ‘read it. It must be owned that this Gabrielle is reliable and true to her word. Moreover, she has a good deal of wit.’
“Adelardi attentively read the letter.
“‘What you have just remarked, princess, is very true; but this time circumstances have favored you. This letter was not written for the occasion; it is sincere from beginning to end. This young girl can keep a secret, but is incapable of prevarication. This is not the kind of a letter she would have written if the contents were not absolutely true.”
“‘Do you think so?’ said the princess. “It is of no consequence, however, as to that, though it would simplify everything still more. But in that case—ah! ciel! let me look at the letter again.’
“She now read it entirely through, instead of merely glancing at the contents.
“‘But in that case, I have lost my physician, and the only one who ever understood my case. This, par exemple! is a real misfortune. If he had had time, at least, to answer my last letter, and tell me what springs I should go to this year! Whom shall I consult now? May is nearly gone, and next month I ought to be there. Really, I am unlucky!’
“‘What do you expect, princess?’ said the marquis, in a tone imperceptibly ironical. ‘One cannot always have good luck.’”
In the quiet of her German retreat, Fleurange suddenly receives the news that an insurrection has broken out in Russia, in which George is implicated. He is taken prisoner, and only awaits in St. Petersburg the sentence which is to banish him to that living tomb, Siberia. Fleurange now sees the opportunity of uniting herself to her lover by burying herself with him. As his hopes in this world are for ever blasted, she obtains the consent of the princess to their union, and sets out for St. Petersburg under the guidance of her young cousin Clement, who knows the object of her mission. This journey and its results complete the fourth book, entitled “The Immolation,” and in it the author rises to a height of power in pathos, description, and incident which is all the more telling that it was altogether unsuspected: The long ride along the dreary strand through the day and through the night; the crossing of the frozen river in the darkness, with the ice cracking ominously beneath them; the scene where Clement and Fleurange are left alone in the face of eternity and immediate death, and where, for the first and last time, when hope of life seems banished, the confession of his love bursts out of his young heart to the half-conscious girl; the last struggle to carry her safe through on her mission of self-immolation to the man she loves—all told in the same simple, unpretentious style, but with an inner force that carries the reader along, and absorbs him as though he were witnessing a tragedy. The strain is sustained to the close of the story. Amid all the fascination, and glitter, and glare of the imperial court of the Czar, when the late Emperor Nicholas was in his “golden prime,” creeps the oppressive sense of a mute but awful terrorism through an atmosphere of combustible human passion all the more dangerous for being so constrained. The petition of Fleurange is about to be granted; but, as it passes through the hands of Vera, a favorite maid of the empress, it is represented as coming from her, between whom and George a sort of betrothal had taken place, and who is in love with him. His sentence, through the instrumentality of Fleurange, is commuted to pardon on condition that he should pass four years on his estates in Livonia, and that he marry Vera before setting out. George is ignorant of the arrival of Fleurange, of her petition, of her desire to bury herself alive with him in Siberia. Vera sees Fleurange, and implores her to save him by the still greater sacrifice of renouncing him for ever. Fleurange goes back again without a word. The man for whom she made so many sacrifices was utterly unworthy of her, and congratulates himself that he escaped committing the foolishness of marrying her, though really in love with her for a time. The selfishness of the mother comes out in the son. As Fleurange and her cousin turn homewards, they meet the bridal party leaving the church. Once more she seeks to bury herself in the convent, and once more Madre Maddalena warns her back. She tells her that, at her first visit, her sufferings appeared as the expiation of an idolatry the extent of which she did not realize; but that something more was essential—the shattering of the idol, though its destruction seemed to involve the very breaking of her own heart.
The shattering of Dorothea’s idol brings a blank despair; and although she marries Ladislaw, and is presumably happy with him, nevertheless she felt “that there was always something better which she might have done, if she had only been better and known better.” The final shattering of Fleurange’s idol brings peace and opens her eyes to the silent heroism that had stood at her side all through, and for every pang of hers suffered a thousand. There is a vast amount of latent power in this story that stands out the more it is considered. Clement is kept in the background through much of the action. We only know that he loves Fleurange, and, prominently as her self-sacrifice is advanced, the shadow of his always overreaches it with the quiet that becomes a true man. At last her eyes are opened, and she sees, no longer Clement, “her brother,” but Clement, the man who has loved her all the while. The closeness of their relationship—that of first cousins—was almost necessary to bring out this part of the story, their almost continual intercourse after their first seeing each other, without the idea ever occurring to Fleurange that her cousin, who was a stranger to her up to the age of eighteen, might possibly fall in love with her. It is no encouragement to marriage within the prohibited degrees to hit upon such an incident once in a story; as little as it is necessary to inform the Catholic reader of what he or she will know beforehand: that the dispensation of the church is necessary to the contracting such a marriage.