"My eternal misery!" exclaimed Marguerite. "The marriage, then, shall not take place."

"I have pledged your word and mine," said the marchioness, and with the more energy, that she felt her influence over her husband about to escape her.

"This marriage, I tell you, shall not take place!" replied the marquis, in a tone louder than that of his wife. "It is too dreadful a thing,"

continued he, in a gloomy sepulchral tone, "to be permitted. A marriage in which a wife loves not her husband--why, it causes madness! As to myself, the marchioness has always loved me, and loved me faithfully--that which drove me mad--oh! that was a different matter."

A flash of diabolical joy shot from the eyes of the marchioness, for she at once saw from the violence of the expressions used by her husband, and the terror depicted on his features, that his insanity was about to return.

"This contract," said the marquis, and he raised it in his hands as if about to tear it.

The marchioness eagerly caught his hand. Marguerite appeared to be hanging by a thread between heaven and h.e.l.l.

"That which drives me mad!" reiterated the marquis, "is a tomb which widely opens, a spectre that issues from the earth, it is a phantom that speaks to me, and says--"

"Your life is in my hands!" murmured the marchioness in his ear, repeating the last words of the dying Morlaix: "I could take it."

"Do you hear that?" cried the marquis, rising, and as if about to rush from the room.

"My father! oh! my father! recall your senses; there is no tomb, there is no spectre, there is no phantom; those words were uttered by the marchioness."

"But I wish you to live," continued the latter, concluding the sentence she had begun, "to forgive me as I forgive you."

"Pardon, Morlaix, pardon!" cried the marquis, falling back in his arm-chair, his hair standing on end with terror, and the perspiration streaming from his forehead.

"Oh! father! father!"

"You see that your father is altogether deranged," said the marchioness, triumphantly; "say no more to him."

"Oh!" cried Marguerite, "G.o.d will, I trust perform a miracle! My love, my caresses, my tears, will restore him to reason."

"Make the attempt," replied the marchioness, coldly, abandoning to her care the marquis, who was powerless, speechless, and almost without consciousness.

"Oh! my poor father!" exclaimed Marguerite, in a tone of agony.

The marquis remained perfectly impa.s.sible.

"Sir!" said the marchioness, in an imperative manner.

"Eh! eh!" cried the marquis, shuddering.

"Save me! oh! save me, father!" cried Marguerite, wringing her hands, and throwing herself back in despair.

"Take this pen and sign," said the marchioness, "you must--it is my will."

"Now, I am lost indeed!" cried Marguerite, overwhelmed with terror, and feeling that she had no longer strength to continue the struggle.

But at the moment that the marquis, overpowered, had written the first letters of his name; when the marchioness was congratulating herself on the victory she had obtained, and Marguerite was about to leave the room in despair, an unexpected incident suddenly changed the scene. The door of the study opened, and Paul, who had been anxiously watching, though invisibly, the whole of this terrible conflict, issued from it.

"Madam," said he, "one word before this contract is signed!"

"Who is it calls me!" said the marchioness, endeavoring to distinguish in the distance that separated them, the person who had thus spoken, and who stood in a dark corner of the room.

"I know that voice!" exclaimed the marquis, shuddering, as if seared by a red-hot iron.

Paul advanced three paces, and the light from the l.u.s.tre hanging in the centre of the room fell full upon him.

"Is it a spectre?" cried the marchioness, in her turn, struck with the resemblance of the youth who stood before her to her former lover.

"I know that face!" cried the marquis, believing that he saw the man whom he had killed.

"My G.o.d! my G.o.d! protect me," stammered Marguerite, raising her eyes and hands to heaven.

"Morlaix! Morlaix!" said the marquis, rising and advancing toward Paul, "Morlaix!--pardon! mercy!" and he fell at full length upon the floor.

"My father!" cried Marguerite, rushing to his a.s.sistance.

At that moment a servant entered the room, with terror in his looks, and addressing the marchioness said--

"Madam, Achard has sent to request that the priest and the doctor of the castle, may instantly be ordered to attend him--he is dying."

"Tell him," replied the marchioness, pointing to her husband, whom Marguerite was vainly endeavoring to restore to consciousness, "that they are both obliged to remain here to attend upon the marquis."

CHAPTER XIV.--RELIGIOUS CONVICTION.

And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.

Shakespeare.

As has been seen by the end of the preceding chapter, G.o.d, by one of those extraordinary combinations, which short-sighted man almost always attributes to chance, had summoned to his presence, and almost at the same moment, the souls of the n.o.ble Marquis d'Auray, and the poor low-born Achard. We have seen that the former, struck by the sight of Paul, the living portrait of his father, as if by a thunderbolt, fell at the feet of the young man, who was himself terrified at the effect his appearance had produced.

As to Achard, the circ.u.mstances which had hastened his death, although differing in their nature, and from very opposite feelings, had arisen from the same fatal causes, and had been brought about by the same individual. The sight of Paul had created direful emotions in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s both of the marquis and Achard. On the former from excess of terror, on the latter from excess of joy.

During the day which had preceded the intended signing of the contract, Achard had felt himself more feeble than usual. Notwithstanding this, he had not neglected in the evening to crawl to his master's grave, there to put up his accustomed prayer. Thence he had observed with a devotion more profound than ever, that ever new and splendid spectacle, the sun sinking into the ocean. He had followed the decline of its enpurpled light, and as though the vast torch of the world had drawn his soul toward it, he had felt his strength extinguished with its last rays; so that when the servant from the castle came in the evening at the accustomed hour to receive his orders, not finding him in his house, had sought for him without the park, and as it was well known that he generally walked in that direction, found him lying extended at the foot of the great oak tree, upon the grave of his master, and deprived of consciousness. Thus did he remain constant to the last in that religious devotedness he had vowed to his master's tomb, and which had been the exclusive feeling of the last years of his life.

The servant took him in his arms, and carried him into his house; and then, terrified at the unexpected accident, had hastened to the marchioness to inform her that Achard required the attendance of a physician and a priest, which message was delivered to her by the servant then in waiting, to which the marchioness refused to accede, under the pretext that they were required as urgently by the marquis as the old servant, and that superiority of rank, powerful, even when at the point of death, gave her husband the right of first employing.

But the intelligence which had been announced to the marchioness at the moment of that dreadful agony, into which their varying interests and varying pa.s.sions had thrown the actors in this family drama, of which we have become the historian, this intelligence, we say, was heard by Paul.

Conceiving that the signature of the contract had now become impossible from the state of the marquis, he had only allowed himself time to whisper to Marguerite, that should she need his a.s.sistance, she would find him at Achard's cottage, and then he rushed into the park, and winding his way amid its serpentine walks and thickets, with the skill of a sear man, who reads his path in the starry firmament, he soon reached the house, entered it panting from his rapid course, and found Achard just as he was recovering from his fainting fit, and clasped him in his arms. The delight of again seeing him renewed the strength of the old man, who now felt certain of having a friendly hand to close his eyes.

"Oh! it is you--it is you!" exclaimed the old man.

"I did not hope to see you again."

"And could you possibly believe that I should have been apprized of the state in which you were, and that I would not instantly fly to your a.s.sistance?"

"But I knew not where to find you--where I could send to tell you that I wished once more to see you before I died."