At the same moment, Madame d"Harville, accompanied by M. de Saint-Remy, appeared from the side of the walk, the impatience of the former not allowing her to wait the arrival of Fleur-de-Marie. Directly the marquise saw her, she ran and embraced her, exclaiming:
"My poor dear child! What happiness does it not afford me to find you thus in life and safety, when I believed you dead!"
"Be a.s.sured, madame," answered Fleur-de-Marie, as she gracefully and modestly returned the affectionate pressure of Madame d"Harville, "that I have equal pleasure in seeing again one whose former kindness has made so deep an impression on my heart!"
"Ah, you little imagine the joy and rapture with which the intelligence of your existence will be welcomed by those who have so bitterly bewailed your supposed loss!"
Fleur-de-Marie, taking La Louve, who had withdrawn to a distance from the affecting scene, by the hand, and presenting her to Madame d"Harville, said:
"Since, madame, my benefactors are good enough to take so lively an interest in my welfare and preservation, permit me to solicit their kindness and favour for my companion, who saved my life at the expense of her own."
"Make yourself perfectly easy on that score, my child; your friends will amply testify to the worthy La Louve how fully they appreciate the service they well know she has rendered you, and that "tis to her they owe the delight of seeing you again."
Confused and blushing, La Louve ventured neither to reply nor raise her eyes towards Madame d"Harville, so completely did the presence of that dignified person abash and overpower her. Yet, at hearing her very name p.r.o.nounced, La Louve could not restrain an exclamation of astonishment.
"But we have not a minute to lose," resumed the marquise. "I am dying with impatience to carry off Fleur-de-Marie, and I have a cloak and warm shawl for her in the carriage. So come, my child, come!" Then, addressing the count, she said, "May I beg of you to give my address to this brave woman, that she may be enabled to come to-morrow to say good-bye to Fleur-de-Marie? That will oblige you to pay us a visit,"
continued Madame d"Harville, speaking to La Louve.
"Depend upon my coming, madame," replied the person addressed. "Since it is to bid adieu to La Goualeuse, I should be grieved, indeed, if I were to miss that last pleasure."
A few minutes after this conversation, Madame d"Harville and La Goualeuse were on the road to Paris.
After witnessing the frightful death by which Jacques Ferrand atoned for the heinous offences of his past life, Rodolph had returned home deeply agitated and affected. After pa.s.sing a long and sleepless night, he sent to summon Sir Walter Murphy, in order to relieve his overcharged heart by confiding to this tried and trusty friend the overwhelmingly painful discovery of the preceding evening relative to Fleur-de-Marie. The honest squire was speechless with astonishment; he could well understand the death-blow this must be to the prince"s best affections, and as he contemplated the pale, careworn countenance of his unhappy friend, whose red, swollen eyes and convulsed features amply bespoke the agony of his mind, he ransacked his brain for some gleam of comfort, and his invention for words of hope and comfort.
"Take courage, my lord," said he at last, drying his eyes, which, spite of all his accustomed coolness, he had not been able to prevent from overflowing, "take courage; yours is indeed an infliction, one that mocks at all vain attempts at consolation; it is deep, lasting, and incurable!"
"You are right; what I felt yesterday seems as nothing to my sense of misery to-day."
"Yesterday, my lord, you were stunned by the blow that fell on you, but as your mind dwells more calmly on it, so does the future seem more dark and dispiriting. I can but say, rouse yourself, my lord, to bear it with courage, for it is beyond all attempts at consolation."
"Yesterday the contempt and horror I felt for that woman,--whom may the Great Being pardon, before whose tribunal she now stands,--mingled with surprise, disgust, and terror, occasioned by her hideous conduct, repressed those bursts of despairing tenderness I can no longer restrain in your sympathising presence, my faithful friend. I fear not to indulge the natural emotions of my heart, and my hitherto pent-up tears may now freely vent themselves. Forgive my weakness, and excuse my thus cowardly shrinking from the trial I am called upon to endure, but it seems to have riven my very heart-strings, and to have left me feeble as an infant! Oh, my child! My loved, my lost child! Long must these scalding tears flow ere I can forget you!"
"Ah, my lord, weep on, for your loss is indeed irreparable!"
"What joy to have atoned to her for all the wretchedness with which her young days have been clouded! What bliss to have unfolded to her the happy destiny that was to recompense her for all her past sorrows! And, then, I should have used so much care and precaution in opening her eyes to the brilliant lot that was to succeed her miserable youth, for the tale, if told too abruptly, might have been too much for her delicate nerves to sustain; but, no, I would by degrees have revealed to her the history of her birth, and prepared her to receive me as her father!"
Then, again bursting into an agony of despair, Rodolph continued: "But what avails all that I would have done, when I am tortured by the cruel reflection that, when I had my child all to myself during the ill-fated day I conducted her to the farm, when she so innocently displayed the rich treasures of her pure and heavenly nature, no secret voice whispered to me that in her I beheld my cherished and lamented daughter?
I might have prevented this dreadful calamity by keeping her with me instead of sending her to Madame Georges. Oh, if I had, I should have been spared my present sufferings, and needed only to have opened my arms and folded her to my heart as my newly found treasure,--more really great and n.o.ble by the beauty of her heart and mind, and perhaps more worthy to fill the station to which I should raise her, than if she had always been reared in opulence and with a knowledge of her rank! I alone am to blame for her death; but mine is an accursed existence. I seem fated to trample on every duty,--a bad son and a bad father!"
Murphy felt that grief such as Rodolph"s admitted of no ordinary consolation. He did not therefore attempt to interrupt its violence by any hackneyed phrases or promises of comfort he well knew could never be realised.
After a long silence, Rodolph resumed, in an agitated voice:
"I cannot stay here after what has happened. Paris is hateful to me; I will quit it to-morrow."
"You are quite right in so doing, my lord."
"We will go by a circuitous route, and I will stop at Bouqueval as I pa.s.s, that I may spend some few hours alone with my sad thoughts, in the chamber where my poor child enjoyed the only peaceful days she was ever permitted to taste. All that was hers shall be carefully collected together,--the books from which she studied, her writings, clothes, even the very articles of furniture and hangings of the chamber; I will make a careful sketch of the whole, and when I return to Gerolstein I will construct a small building containing the fac-simile of my poor child"s apartment, with all that it contained, to be erected in the private ground in which stands the monument built by me in memory of my outraged parent; there I will go and bewail my daughter. These two funeral mementos will for ever remind me of my crime towards my father, and the punishment inflicted on me through my own child."
After a fresh silence, Rodolph said, "Let all be got ready for my departure to-morrow."
Anxious, if possible, to create if but a momentary change of ideas in the prince"s mind, Murphy said, "All shall be prepared, my lord, according to your desire; only you appear to have forgotten that to-morrow is fixed for the celebration of the marriage of Rigolette with the son of Madame Georges, and that the ceremony was to take place at Bouqueval. Not contented with providing for Germain as long as he lives, and liberally endowing his bride, you also promised to be present to bestow the hand of your young protegee on her lover."
"True, true,--I did engage to do so; but I confess I have not sufficient courage to venture in a scene of gaiety. I cannot, therefore, visit the farm to-morrow, for to join in the wedding festivities is impossible."
"Perhaps the scene might serve to calm your wounded feelings, with the thought that, if miserable yourself, you have made others happy."
"No, my friend, no! Grief is ever selfish, and loves to indulge itself in solitude. You shall supply my place to-morrow; and beg of Madame Georges to collect together all my poor child"s possessions; then when the room is fitly arranged, you will have an exact copy taken of it, and cause it to be sent to me in Germany."
"And will you not even see Madame d"Harville, my lord, ere you set out on your journey?"
At the recollection of Clemence, Rodolph started; his affection for her burned as steadfastly and sincerely as ever, but, for the moment, it seemed buried beneath the overwhelming grief which oppressed him. The tender sympathy of Madame d"Harville appeared to him the only source of consolation; but, the next instant, he rejected the idea of seeking consolation in the love of another as unworthy his paternal sorrow.
"No, my kind friend, I shall not see Madame d"Harville previously to quitting Paris. I wrote to her a few days since, telling her of the death of Fleur-de-Marie, and the pain it had caused me. When she learns that the ill-fated girl was my long-lost daughter, she will readily understand that there are some griefs, or rather fatal punishments, it is requisite to endure alone."
A gentle knock was heard at the door at this minute. Rodolph, with displeasure at the interruption, signed for Murphy to ascertain who it was. The faithful squire immediately rose, and, partly opening the door, perceived one of the prince"s aides-de-camp, who said a few words in a low tone, to which Murphy replied by a motion of the head, and, returning to Rodolph, said, "Have the goodness, my lord, to excuse me for an instant! A person wishes to see me directly on business that concerns your royal highness."
"Go!" replied the prince.
Scarcely had the door closed on Murphy, than Rodolph, covering his face with his hands, uttered a heavy groan.
"What horrible feelings possess me!" cried he. "My mind seems one vast ocean of gall and bitterness; the presence of my best and most faithful friend is painful to me; and the recollection of a love pure and elevated as mine distresses and embarra.s.ses me. Last night, too, I was cowardly enough to learn the death of Sarah with savage joy. I felicitated myself on being free from an unnatural being like her, who had caused the destruction of my child; I promised myself the horrible satisfaction of witnessing the mortal agonies of the wretch who deprived my child of life. But I was baffled of my dear revenge. Another cruel punishment!" exclaimed he, starting with rage from his chair. "Yet although I knew yesterday as well as to-day that my child was dead, I did not experience such a whirlwind of despairing, self-accusing agony as now rends my soul; because I did not then recall to mind the one torturing fact that will for ever step in between me and consolation. I did not then recall the circ.u.mstance of my having seen and known my beloved child, and, moreover, discovered in her untold treasures of goodness and n.o.bleness of character. Yet how little did I profit by her being at the farm! Merely saw her three times--yes, three times--no more! when I might have beheld her each day--nay, have kept her ever beside me. Oh, that will be my unceasing punishment, my never-ending reproach and torture,--to think I had my daughter near me, and actually sent her from me! Nor, though I felt how deserving she was of every fond care, did I even admit her into my presence but three poor distant times."
While the unhappy prince thus continued to torment himself with these and similar reflections, the door of the apartment suddenly opened and Murphy entered, looking so pale and agitated that even Rodolph could not help remarking it; and rising hastily, he exclaimed:
"For heaven"s sake, Murphy, what has happened to you?"
"Nothing, my lord."
"Yet you are pale!"
""Tis with astonishment."
"Astonishment at what?"
"Madame d"Harville."
"Madame d"Harville! Gracious heaven! Some fresh misfortune?"
"No, no, my lord--indeed, nothing unfortunate has occurred. Pray compose yourself! She is--in the drawing-room--"
"Here--in my house? Madame d"Harville here? Impossible!"
"My lord, I told you the surprise had quite overpowered me!"
"Tell me what has induced her to take such a step! Speak, I conjure you!
In heaven"s name, explain the reason for her acting so contrary to her usually rigid notions!"