But that little fragile creature was more entirely the soul of Love than any other being I have known. She did, indeed, when we had her in Madame Verdon's little oratory hard by, kneel before the crucifix and pray with me, but her ear caught, before mine, the departing steps of the priest, and the entering ones of the surgeon. She rose up, simply did not listen to my persuasions, but walked in with quiet dignity. Madame Darpent was there, and would have entreated her to retire, but she said: 'This is a wife's place.' And as she took his hands she met a look in his eyes which I verily believe more than compensated to her for all the years of weary pining in neglect. The doctor would have ordered her off, but she only said: 'I shall not cry, I shall no faint.' And they let her keep his hand, though Clement had to hold him. I waited, setting our hostess free to attend to one of her dying charges, from whom she could ill be spared.
And Cecile kept her word, though it was a terrible time, for there was no endurance in poor Armand's shallow nature, and his cries and struggles were piteous. He could dare, but not suffer, and had not both she and Clement been resolute and tranquil, the doctor owned that he could not have succeeded.
'But Madame la Comtesse is a true heroin,' he said, when our patient was laid down finally, tranquil and exhausted, to be watched over through the night.
The time that followed was altogether the happiest of all my poor sister-in-law's married life. Her husband could hardly bear to lose sight of her for a moment, or to take anything from any hand save hers. If Madame Darpent had not absolutely taken the command of both she would never have had any rest, for she never seemed sensible of fatigue; indeed, to sit with his hand in hers really refreshed her more than sleep. When she looked forward to his recovery, her only regret was at her own wickedness in the joy that WOULD spring up when she thought of her poor cripple being wholly dependent on her, and never wanting to leave her again. I had been obliged to leave her after the first night, but I spent much of every day in trying to help her, and she was always in a tearful state of blissful hope, as she would whisper to me his promises for the future and his affectionate words-the fretful ones, of which she had her full share, were all forgotten, except by Clement Darpent, who shrugged his shoulders at them, and thought when he had a wife--
Poor Armand, would he have been able, even as a maimed man, to keep his word? We never knew, for, after seeming for a fortnight to be on the way to recovery, he took a turn for the worse, and after a few days of suffering, which he bore much better than the first, there came that cessation of pain which the doctors declared to mean that death was beginning its work. He was much changed by these weeks of illness. He seemed to have passed out of that foolish worldly dream that had enchanted him all his poor young life; he was scarcely twenty-seven, and to have ceased from that idol-worship of the Prince which had led him to sacrifice on that shrine the wife whom he had only just learned to love and prize. 'Ah! sister,' he said to me, 'I see now what Philippe would have made me.'
He asked my pardon most touchingly for his share in trying to abduct me, and Clement Darpent's also for the attack on him, though, as he said, Darpent had long before shown his forgiveness. His little children were brought to him, making large eyes with fright at his deathlike looks, and clinging to their mother, too much terrified to cry when he kissed them, blessed them, and bade Maurice consider his mother, and obey her above all things, and to regard me as next to her.
'Ah! if I had had such a loving mother I should never have become so brutally selfish,' he said; and, indeed, the sight of her sweet, tender, patient face seemed to make him grieve for all the sins of his dissipated life. His confessor declared that he was in the most pious disposition of penitence. And thus, one summer evening, with his wife, Madame Darpent, and myself watching and praying round him, Armand d'Aubepine passed away from the temptations that beset a French noble.
I took my poor Cecile home sinking into a severe illness, which I thought for many days would be her death. All her old terror of Madame Croquelebois returned, and for many nights and days Madame Darpent or I had to be constantly with her, though we had outside troubles enough of our own. Those two sick-rooms seem to swallow up my recollection.
CHAPTER XXXII. ESCAPE
(Annora's Narrative)
There was indeed a good deal passing beyond those rooms where Margaret was so absorbed in her d'Aubepines that I sometimes thought she forgot her own kindred in them. Poor things! they were in sad case, though how Cecile could break her heart over a fellow who had used her so vilely, I could never understand. He repented, they said. So much the better for him; but a pretty life he would have led her if he had recovered. Why, what is there for a French noble to do but to fight, dance attendance on the King, and be dissipated? There is no House of Lords, no Quarter-Sessions, no way of being useful; and if he tried to improve his peasantry he is a dangerous man, and they send him a lettre de cachet. He has leave to do nothing but oppress the poor wretches, and that he is fairly obliged to do, so heavy are his expenses at Court. The King may pension him, but the pension is all wrung out of the poor in another shape! Heaven knows our English nobles are far from what they might be, but they have not the stumbling-blocks in their way that the French have under their old King, who was a little lad then, and might have been led to better things if his mother had had less pride and more good sense.
Gaspard de Nidemerle does the best he can. He is a really good man, I do believe, but he has been chiefly with the army, or on his own estate. And he can effect little good, hampered as he is on all sides.
In those days, Clement Darpent was sad enough at heart, but he did not quite despair of his country, though things were getting worse and worse. Mademoiselle had saved the Prince and his crew, besotted as she was upon them; and finely they requited Paris, which had sheltered them. All the more decent folk among them were lying wounded in different houses, and scarcely any of their chiefs were left afoot but the Duke of Beaufort, with his handsome face and his fine curls of flaxen hair, looking like a king, but good for nothing but to be a king of ruffians.
What does the Prince do but go to the Hotel de Ville with the Duke of Orleans and Beaufort, at six o'clock in the evening of the 4th of July, under pretence of thanking the magistrates and deputies of letting him in. Then he demanded of them to proclaim that the King was a prisoner in Mazarin's hands, and to throw themselves into the war. They would do no such thing, nor let themselves be intimidated, whereupon the Prince went out on the steps, and shouted to his rabble rout, where there were plenty of soldiers in disguise, who had been drinking ever since noon: 'These gentlemen will do nothing for us,' he cried. 'Do what you like with them.'
And then, like a coward, he got into a carriage with Monsieur and drove off, while M. de Beaufort, in a mercer's shop, acted general to the mob, who filled the whole place. It was a regular storm. Flags with 'Arret d'Union' were displayed, shots fired, the soldiers got into the houses and aimed in at the windows, logs of wood smeared with fat were set fire to before the doors so as to burn them down.
Clement, who was a depute for his arrondissement, had, while this was going on, been getting together the younger and stronger men with the guard, to make a barricade of benches, tables, and chairs; and they defended this for a long time, but ammunition failed them, and the barricade began to give way amid the shouts of the mob. The poor old men crouching in the halls were confessing to the cures, expecting death every moment; but, happily, even that long July evening had an end; darkness came down on them, and there were no lights. The mob went tumbling about, at a greater loss than the deputies and magistrates, who did at least know the way. Clement, with a poor old gouty echevin on his arm, struggled out, he knew not how, into one of the passages, where a fellow rushed at them, crying, 'Down with the Mazarins!' but Clement knew by his voice that he was no soldier or bandit, but a foolish artisan, and at haphazard said: 'Come, come, my good lad, none of this nonsense. This gentleman will give you a crown if you will help him out.'