Mère Girauds Little Daughter | Page 7

of lovely saints healing the sick.
"What is the matter?" asked Laure.
The woman looked down at the child and shivered.
"I do not know," she answered hoarsely. "Only we are ill, and God has
forsaken us. We have not tasted food for two days."
Laure took something from her purse and laid it silently in the child's
small, fevered hand. The woman burst into tears.
"Madame," she said, "it is a twenty-franc piece."
"Yes," said Laure gently. "When it is spent come to me again," and she
went to her carriage.
"My child," said Mère Giraud, "it is you who are a saint. The good God
did wisely in showering blessings upon you."
A few days longer she was happy, and then she awakened from her
sleep one night, and found Laure standing at her bedside looking down
at her and shuddering. She started up with an exclamation of terror.
"Mon Dieu!" she said. "What is it?"
She was answered in a voice she had never heard before,--Laure's, but
hoarse and shaken. Laure had fallen upon her knees, and grasped the
bedclothes, hiding her face in the folds.
"I am ill," she answered in this strange, changed tone. "I am--I am cold
and burning--I am--dying."
In an instant Mère Giraud stood upon the floor holding her already
insensible form in her arm'. She was obliged to lay her upon the floor
while she rang the bell to alarm the servants. She sent for Valentin and
a doctor. The doctor, arriving, regarded the beautiful face with manifest

surprise and alarm. It was no longer pale, but darkly flushed, and the
stamp of terrible pain was upon it.
"She has been exposed to infection," he said. "This is surely the case. It
is a malignant fever."
Then Mère Giraud thought of the poor mother and child.
"O my God!" she prayed, "do not let her die a martyr."
But the next day there was not a servant left in the house; but Valentin
was there, and there had come a Sister of Mercy. When she came,
Valentin met her, and led her into the salon. They remained together
for half an hour, and then came out and went to the sick-room, and
there were traces of tears upon the Sister's face. She was a patient,
tender creature, who did her work well, and she listened with untiring
gentleness to Mère Giraud's passionate plaints.
"So beautiful, so young, so beloved," cried the poor mother; "and
Monsieur absent in Normandy, though it is impossible to say where!
And if death should come before his return, who could confront him
with the truth? So beautiful, so happy, so adored!"
And Laure lay upon the bed, sometimes wildly delirious, sometimes a
dreadful statue of stone,--unhearing, unseeing, unmoving,--death
without death's rest,--life in death's bonds of iron.
But while Mère Giraud wept, Valentin had no tears. He was faithful,
untiring, but silent even at the worst.
"One would think he had no heart," said Mère Giraud; "but men are
often so,--ready to work, but cold and dumb. Ah! it is only a mother
who bears the deepest grief."
She fought passionately enough for a hope at first, but it was forced
from her grasp in the end. Death had entered the house and spoken to
her in the changed voice which had summoned her from her sleep.

"Madame," said the doctor one evening as they stood over the bed
while the sun went down, "I have done all that is possible. She will not
see the sun set again. She may not see it rise."
Mère Giraud fell upon her knees beside the bed, crossing herself and
weeping.
"She will die," she said, "a blessed martyr. She will die the death of a
saint."
That very night--only a few hours later--there came to them a
friend,--one they had not for one moment even hoped to see,--a gentle,
grave old man, in a thin, well-worn black robe,--the Curé of St. Croix.
Him Valentin met also, and when the two saw each other, there were
barriers that fell away in their first interchange of looks.
"My son," said the old man, holding out his hands, "tell me the truth."
Then Valentin fell into a chair and hid his face
"She is dying," he said, "and I cannot ask that she should live."
"What was my life"--he cried passionately, speaking again--"what was
my life to me that I should not have given it to save her,--to save her to
her beauty and honor, and her mother's love! I would have given it
cheerfully,--a thousand times,--a thousand times again and again. But it
was not to be; and, in spite of my prayers, I lost her. O my God!" with a
sob of agony, "if to-night she were in St. Croix and I