Mademoiselle de Camargo turned toward Pont-de-Veyle. "Monsieur," said she, "open that box or rather hand it to me." She took the box, opened it, and took the bouquet from it. "But above all, gentlemen, I must explain to you why I have preserved this bouquet." While saying this she attempted to smell the vanished odor of the bouquet.
"One morning," she resumed, "Monsieur de Marteille awoke me early—'Farewell!' he said, pale and trembling.—'What are you saying?' cried I with affright.—'Alas,' replied he, embracing me, I did not wish to tell you before, but for a fortnight I have had orders to leave. Hostilities are to be resumed in the Low Countries; I have no longer a single hour either for you or for me; I have over forty leagues to travel to-day.'—'Oh, my God, what will become of me?' said I weeping. 'I will follow you.'—'But, my dear Marianne, I shall return.'—'You will return in an age! Go, cruel one, I shall be dead when you return.'
"An hour was spent in taking leave and in tears; he was obliged to go; he went.
"I returned to weep in that retreat, that was so delightful the evening before. Two days after his departure, he wrote me a very tender letter, in which he told me that on the next day, he would have the consolation of engaging in battle. 'I hope,' added he, 'that the campaign will not be a long one; some days of hard fighting, and then I return to your feet.' What more shall I tell you? He wrote me once again."
Mademoiselle de Camargo unfolded slowly the torn letter. "Here is the second letter:—
Oct 17.
"'No, I shall not return, my dear, I am going to die, but without fear, without reproach. Oh! if you were here, Marianne! What madness! in a hospital where, all of us, all, be we what we may, are disfigured with wounds, and dying! What an idea to dash ahead in the fight, when I only thought of seeing you again. As soon as I was wounded, I asked the surgeon if I should live long enough to reach Paris: "You have but an hour," he answered me pitilessly... They brought me here with the others. In a word, we should learn to resign ourselves to what comes from Heaven. I die content with having loved you; console yourself; return to the opera. I am not jealous of those who shall succeed me, for will they love you as I have done? Farewell, Marianne, death approaches, and death never waits; I thank it for having left me sufficient time to bid you farewell. Now, it will be I who will wait for you.
"'Farewell, farewell, I press you to my heart, which ceases to beat.'"
After having wiped her eyes, Mademoiselle de Camargo continued as follows: "Shall I describe to you all my sorrows, all my tears, all my anguish! Alas! as he had said, I returned to the opera. I did not forget Monsieur de Marteille, in the tempest of my folly. Others have loved me. I have loved no one but Monsieur de Marteille; his memory has beamed upon my life like a blessing from heaven. When I reappeared at the opera, I was seen attending mass; I was laughed at for my devotion. They did not understand, philosophers as they were, that I prayed to[pg 239] God, in consequence of those words of Monsieur de Martielle: 'Now it will be I who will wait for you.'
"When I left the chateau, I plucked a bouquet in the park, thinking that I was plucking the flowers that had bloomed for him; I brought away this bouquet, along with the portrait that you see there. I had vowed, in leaving our dear retreat, to go every year, at the same season, to gather a bouquet in the park. Will you believe it? I never went there again!"