Toward seven o'clock in the evening of a day in the year 1842, ten years after the events we have here recorded, a heavy carriage stopped before the gate of the Carmelite convent at Chartres.
The carriage contained five persons: two children eight and nine years old, a gentleman and lady,--the first about thirty-five, the second thirty,--and a peasant, bent with age but still vigorous in spite of his white hair. Although his dress was humble, this peasant occupied the seat beside the lady; one of the children was sitting on his knee and playing with the rings of a thick steel chain which fastened his watch to the button-hole of his waistcoat, while he himself passed his brown and shrivelled hand through the silky hair of the little one.
At the jar of the carriage, as it turned from the paved high-road into the faubourg Saint-Jean, the lady put her head out of the window; then she drew it back with an expression of pain as she saw the high walls that surrounded the convent, and the gloomy portal which gave entrance to it.
The postilion dismounted, and going, to the door of the carriage said:--
"This is the place."
The lady pressed the hand of her husband, who was seated opposite to her, while two large tears rolled down her cheeks.
"Go, Mary, and take courage," said the young man, in whom our readers will recognize Baron Michel de la Logerie. "I regret that the convent rules will not let me share this duty with you. It is the first time in ten years we have suffered apart."
"You will speak to her of me, will you not?" said the old peasant.
"Yes, my Jean," answered Mary.
The young woman sprang from the carriage and knocked at the gate. The sound of the knocker gave a funeral note, which echoed through the vaulted portal.
"Mère Sainte-Marthe?" said the lady when her summons was answered.
"Are you the person our mother is expecting?" asked the Carmelite.
"Yes, sister."
"Then come in. You shall see her; but remember, our rule requires that, although she is our Superior, you can see her only in presence of a sister; and she forbids you absolutely to speak to her, even in these last moments, of the earthly things she has left behind her."
Mary bowed her head.
The Carmelite went first and conducted the Baronne de la Logerie along a damp, dark corridor, in which were a dozen doors; she opened one of these doors and stood aside to allow the lady to enter. Mary hesitated an instant; she was choking with emotion; then she regained her self-command, crossed the threshold, and found herself in a little cell about eight feet square.
In this cell, for all furniture, was a bed, a chair, and a prie-dieu; for all ornament, a few holy images fastened to the bare walls, and an ebony and brass crucifix, which stretched out its arms above the prie-dieu.
Mary saw nothing of all that. On the bed lay a woman whose face had taken the color and the transparency of wax, and whose discolored lips seemed about to exhale their parting breath.
This woman was, or rather, had been Bertha. She was now naught else than the Mère Sainte-Marthe, superior of the convent of the Carmelites at Chartres,--soon to be only a corpse.
When she saw the lady enter the dying woman stretched forth her arms, and Mary fled to them. Long they held themselves embraced; Mary bathing with tears her sister's face, Bertha gasping,--for in her eyes, hollowed by the austerities of the cloister, there seemed to be no more tears.
The Carmelite sister, who had seated herself on the chair and was reading her breviary, was, however, not so occupied with her prayers that she did not notice what was passing before her. She probably thought these embraces were lasting too long, for she coughed significantly.
Mère Sainte-Marthe gently pushed Mary away from her, but did not release her hand, which she held in hers.
"Sister! sister!" murmured Mary, "who could have told me we should meet thus?"
"It is God's will, to which we must submit," replied the Carmelite mother.
"His will is sometimes very stern," sighed Mary.
"How can you say so, sister? That will is gentle and most merciful to me. God, who might have left me longer on this earth, deigns to recall me to Him."
"You will meet our father above," said Mary.
"And whom do I leave behind me?"
"Our good Jean Oullier, who lives and loves you always, Bertha."
"Thank you; and whom else?"
"My husband,--and two children, who are named, the boy, Pierre, the girl, Bertha. I have taught them to bless you daily."
A faint color came upon the cheeks of the dying woman.
"Dear children!" she murmured, "if God grants me a place beside Him, I promise to pray for them above."
And the dying soul began on earth the prayer it was to end in heaven.
In the midst of that prayer and in the silence of that cell, the striking of a clock was heard, then the tinkling of a bell, and the sound of feet approaching along the corridor. They were bringing the viaticum.
Mary fell on her knees by Bertha's pillow. The priest entered, holding the sacred chalice in his left hand, and in his right the consecrated wafer.
At this moment Mary felt the hand of Bertha seeking hers; for the purpose, as she thought, of pressing it. She was mistaken; Bertha slipped into her sister's hand an object which she felt to be a locket. She tried to look at it.
"No no," said Bertha, "wait till I am dead."
Mary made a sign of obedience and bowed her head upon her clasped hands.
The cell was now filled with nuns, all kneeling; and as far as could be seen along the corridor were others in their gloomy robes kneeling and praying.
The dying woman seemed to recover some strength with which to go into the presence of her Creator; she lifted herself up, murmuring:--
"I am ready, my God!"
The priest laid the wafer on her lips, and she fell back gently on the bed with closed eyes and clasped hands. Except for the motion of her lips, she seemed to have died, so pale was her face, so feeble the breath that issued from her bosom.
The priest concluded the other ceremonies of the extreme unction, but she did not open her eyes. He left the cell, and the assistants followed him.
The Carmelite nun, who had first met Mary, now came to her where she knelt, and touching her gently on the shoulder, said:--
"My sister, the rule of our order forbids that you should stay any longer in this cell."
"Bertha! Bertha!" said Mary, sobbing, "do you hear what they say to me? My God! after living together twenty years without being parted for a single day, and then separated for eleven years,--not to be allowed one hour together when we are parting for eternity!"
"You may stay in the house until I am dead, my sister and it will make me happy to think you are near me and praying for me."
Mary bent down to kiss her dying sister for the last time, but the nun interposed, saying:--
"Do not turn our blessed mother's mind from the celestial path she now has entered, by vain, earthly thoughts."
"Oh, I will not leave her thus!" cried Mary, flinging herself on Bertha's bed and putting her lips to those of her sister. Bertha's lips replied by a feeble quiver, then she gently pushed her sister away from her. But the hand that made this motion had no power to rejoin the other, and it fell inert upon the bed.
The nun advanced, and without a tear, without a sigh, without a sign of emotion upon her face, she took that dying hand, joined it to the other, and laid them clasped upon Bertha's breast. Then she gently pushed Mary to the door.
"Oh, Bertha! Bertha!" cried her sister, breaking into sobs.
It seemed to her that a murmur echoed back these sobs, and in that murmur she fancied that she heard the name of "Mary!"
She was in the corridor; the door of the cell was closed behind her.
"Oh, let me see her!" she cried. "Let me see her once more,--only once!"
But the nun stretched out her arms and barred the way.
"I submit," said Mary, blinded by her tears. "Take me where you choose, sister."
The nun led her to an empty cell, the occupant of which had died the night before. Mary saw through her tears a prie-dieu surmounted by a crucifix, and she went, half stumbling, to kneel there.
For an hour she remained absorbed in prayer. At the end of an hour the nun returned and said, in the same cold impassible voice:--
"Mère Sainte-Marthe is dead."
"May I see her?" asked Mary.
"The rule of our order forbids it," replied the Carmelite.
Mary dropped her head into her hands with a sigh. One of those hands still clasped the object Bertha had given her at the moment she was about to receive, for the last time, the blessed sacrament. Mère Sainte-Marthe was dead, and Mary was free to look at what she had given her.
It was, as she knew already from its shape, a locket. Mary opened it. It contained some hair and a paper. The hair was the color of Michel's hair; the paper contained these words: "Cut during his sleep on the night of June 5, 1832."
"O, my God!" murmured Mary, raising her eyes to the crucifix, "my God! in thy mercy receive her! for thy passion lasted but forty days, and hers has lasted eleven years!"
Putting the locket upon her heart, Mary went down the cold, damp stairway of the convent.
The carriage and those it contained were still waiting before the gate.
"Well?" asked Michel, opening the door and making a step toward his wife.
"Alas, it is all over!" replied Mary, throwing herself into his arms. "She died promising to pray for us above."
"Happy children!" said Jean Oullier, laying his hands, one on the head of the little boy, the other on that of the little girl. "Happy children! walk fearlessly through life, for a martyr watches over you in heaven!"