The Message | Page 7

she took them mechanically; then, trembling from head
to foot, she said in a hollow voice:
"And I burned all his letters!--I have nothing of him left! --Nothing!
nothing!"
She struck her hand against her forehead.
"Madame----" I began.
She glanced at me in the convulsion of grief.

"I cut this from his head, this lock of his hair."
And I gave her that last imperishable token that had been a very part of
him she loved. Ah! if you had felt, as I felt then, her burning tears
falling on your hands, you would know what gratitude is, when it
follows so closely upon the benefit. Her eyes shone with a feverish
glitter, a faint ray of happiness gleamed out of her terrible suffering, as
she grasped my hands in hers, and said, in a choking voice:
"Ah! you love! May you be happy always. May you never lose her
whom you love."
She broke off, and fled away with her treasure.
Next morning, this night-scene among my dreams seemed like a dream;
to make sure of the piteous truth, I was obliged to look fruitlessly under
my pillow for the packet of letters. There is no need to tell you how the
next day went. I spent several hours of it with the Juliette whom my
poor comrade had so praised to me. In her lightest words, her gestures,
in all that she did and said, I saw proofs of the nobleness of soul, the
delicacy of feeling which made her what she was, one of those beloved,
loving, and self-sacrificing natures so rarely found upon this earth.
In the evening the Comte de Montpersan came himself as far as
Moulins with me. There he spoke with a kind of embarrassment:
"Monsieur, if it is not abusing your good-nature, and acting very
inconsiderately towards a stranger to whom we are already under
obligations, would you have the goodness, as you are going to Paris, to
remit a sum of money to M. de ---- (I forget the name), in the Rue du
Sentier; I owe him an amount, and he asked me to send it as soon as
possible."
"Willingly," said I. And in the innocence of my heart, I took charge of a
rouleau of twenty-five louis d'or, which paid the expenses of my
journey back to Paris; and only when, on my arrival, I went to the
address indicated to repay the amount to M. de Montpersan's
correspondent, did I understand the ingenious delicacy with which
Juliette had obliged me. Was not all the genius of a loving woman
revealed in such a way of lending, in her reticence with regard to a
poverty easily guessed?
And what rapture to have this adventure to tell to a woman who clung
to you more closely in dread, saying, "Oh, my dear, not you! You must
not die!"

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