THE LAST STRUGGLE
Suddenly she stopped, a few feet from her mother, who looked at her as the mother of Christ must have looked at her son upon the cross. She raised her hand, and pointing to the spot where the road to Montegnac branched from the highway, she said, smiling:--"See that carriage with the post-horses; Monsieur Roubaud is returning to us. We shall now know how many hours I have to live."
"Hours?" said Gerard.
"Did I not tell you I was taking my last walk?" she replied. "I have come here to see for the last time this glorious scene in all its splendor!" She pointed first to the village where the whole population seemed to be collected in the church square, and then to the beautiful meadows glowing in the last rays of the setting sun. "Ah!" she said, "let me see the benediction of God in the strange atmospheric condition to which we owe the safety of our harvest. Around us, on all sides, tempests, hail, lightning, have struck incessantly and pitilessly. The common people think thus, why not I? I do so need to see in this a happy augury for what awaits me after death!"
The child stood up and took his mother's hand and laid it on his head.
Veronique, deeply affected by the action, so full of eloquence, took up her son with supernatural strength, seating him on her left arm as though he were still an infant at her breast, saying, as she kissed him:--"Do you see that land, my son? When you are a man, continue there your mother's work."
"Madame," said the rector, in a grave voice, "a few strong and privileged beings are able to contemplate their coming death face to face, to fight, as it were, a duel with it, and to display a courage and an ability which challenge admiration. You show us this terrible spectacle; but perhaps you have too little pity for us; leave us at least the hope that you may be mistaken, and that God will allow you to finish that which you have begun."
"All I have done is through you, my friends," she said. "I have been useful, I can be so no longer. All is fruitful around us now; nothing is barren and desolated here except my heart. You well know, my dear rector, that I can only find peace and pardon /there/."
She stretched her hand toward the cemetery. Never had she said as much since the day of her arrival, when she was taken with sudden illness at the same spot. The rector looked attentively at his penitent, and the habit of penetration he had long acquired made him see that in those simple words he had won another triumph. Veronique must have made a mighty effort over herself to break her twelve years' silence with a speech that said so much. The rector clasped his hands with a fervent gesture that was natural to him as he looked with deep emotion at the members of this family whose secrets had passed into his heart.
Gerard, to whom the words "peace and pardon" must have seemed strange, was bewildered. Monsieur Ruffin, with his eyes fixed on Veronique, was stupefied. At this instant the carriage came rapidly up the avenue.
"There are five of them!" cried the rector, who could see and count the travellers.
"Five!" exclaimed Gerard. "Can five know more than two?"
"Ah," cried Madame Graslin suddenly, grasping the rector's arm, "the /procureur-general/ is among them! What is he doing here?"
"And papa Grossetete, too!" cried Francis.
"Madame," said the rector, supporting Veronique, and leading her apart a few steps, "show courage; be worthy of yourself."
"But what can he want?" she replied, leaning on the balustrade.
"Mother!" (the old woman ran to her daughter with an activity that belied her years.) "I shall see him again," she said.
"As he comes with Monsieur Grossetete," said the rector, "he can have none but good intentions."
"Ah! monsieur, my child will die!" cried Madame Sauviat, seeing the effect of the rector's words on her daughter's face. "How can her heart survive such emotions? Monsieur Grossetete has always hitherto prevented that man from seeing Veronique."
Madame Graslin's face was on fire.
"Do you hate him so much?" said the Abbe Bonnet.
"She left Limoges to escape the sight of him, and to escape letting the whole town into her secrets," said Madame Sauviat, terrified at the change she saw on Madame Graslin's features.
"Do you not see that he will poison my few remaining hours? When I ought to be thinking of heaven he will nail me to earth," cried Veronique.
The rector took her arm and constrained her to walk aside with him.
When they were alone he stopped and gave her one of those angelic looks with which he was able to calm the violent convulsions of the soul.
"If it is really so," he said, "as your confessor, I order you to receive him, to be kind and affectionate to him, to quit that garment of wrath, and forgive him as God will forgive you. Can there still be the remains of passion of a soul I believed to be purified. Burn this last incense on the altar of your penitence, or else your repentance is a lie."
"There was still that effort to make--and it is made," she answered, wiping her eyes. "The devil lurked in that last fold of my heart, and God, no doubt, put into Monsieur de Grandville's mind the thought that brings him here. Ah! how many times must God strike me?" she cried.
She stopped, as if to say a mental prayer; then she returned to Madame Sauviat and said in a low voice:
"My dear mother, be kind and gentle to Monsieur de Grandville."
The old woman clasped her hands with a feverish shudder.
"There is no longer any hope," she said, seizing the rector's hand.
The carriage, announced by the postilion's whip, was now coming up the last slope; the gates were opened, it entered the courtyard, and the travellers came at once to the terrace. They were the illustrious Archbishop Dutheil, who was on his way to consecrate Monseigneur Gabriel de Rastignac, the /procureur-general/, Monsieur de Grandville, Monsieur Grossetete, Monsieur Roubaud, and one of the most celebrated physicians in Paris, Horace Bianchon.