She blushed and looked at me; but she had not the strength to deny me anything.

"Dear Eugene," she said, "I am yours. This is surely the place where I owe the reward of your love."

Oh! unalloyed ecstasy of true love, I had never known you before! Never until that day did I really exist!

x.x.xVI

GREAT EVENTS.--CONCLUSION

A new dawn had risen for me; beside Nicette time fairly flew, and love alone remained. It seemed to me that I loved her more dearly every day.

Sometimes the poor child feared that her happiness was only a dream. How keen our pleasures were! how sweet our intercourse! Nicette was no longer the poor flower girl whom I had known long before. Since she had known me, she had striven incessantly to leave behind her every trace of manners and mode of speech that might be unpleasant to me; she had struggled to acquire the indispensable knowledge that she lacked. During all the time that she had lived alone on my landing, she had devoted to study every instant that was not given to thoughts of me. The result was that she talked easily and expressed herself with facility; her manners were refined, her appearance simple, but modest; she did not hold herself perfectly stiff, or keep her eyes cast down, or a.s.sume the prudish airs which distinguished Pelagie--before she was my wife; but her demeanor was respectable, her glance sweet and expressive; her whole aspect was most attractive; and her heart--ah! her heart was a treasure!

Six months had pa.s.sed like a day since I had found Nicette; our happiness would have been perfect but for her occasional fits of melancholy, the cause of which I divined.

"You are married," she often said to me; "perhaps it is very wrong of me to live with you. Suppose that you should despise me some day."

"Dear Nicette! drive away these thoughts, which my heart repels. Let the world think and say what it will! If it blames me, it is wrong. In good faith, which of the two deserves to be despised, the wife who deceives her husband, or the mistress who is true to her lover?"

But one morning, while we were breakfasting, there came a violent ring at my door. Nicette answered the bell and returned, followed by a woman whom I recognized: it was Justine, Pelagie's maid.

My blood froze in my veins. Why had she come?

"Monsieur," said Justine, "madame your wife is very sick; when she came home from a ball three days ago, she began to vomit blood; they think she can't get well, and she wants to see you."

Nicette turned pale; I saw her stagger, but she ran to fetch my hat.

"Go, my dear," she said; "go at once; your wife is waiting for you. If necessary, stay with her, don't come back! But try to save her life."

I hurried after Justine and returned to that house which I had thought that I should never enter again. How everything was changed! What confusion everywhere! I found my way at last to my wife's apartment and approached her bed; I could hardly recognize her. Was this that Pelagie who used to be so fresh and pretty?--I forgot her faults, and I was conscious of no feeling for her but pity.

She held out her hand.

"I wanted to see you before I died," she said, in a faint voice.

"Eugene, forgive my wrongdoing. I am punished for it, as you see. If I had listened to you, I should not be standing now on the edge of the grave."

I tried to comfort her, to revive hope in her heart; but I could not; she knew too well that the mainspring of life was broken.

I took my place by her side. The day pa.s.sed without bringing any change in her condition, but the night was terrible; and about five in the morning, Pelagie ceased to live.

I shed tears over the remains of a woman whose life was so brief and whose happiness was so deceptive.

Having completed the business to which this sad event required me to attend, and having paid my wife's debts, I returned to Nicette.

"Well?" she said; "your wife?"

"She is no more!"

"Oh! my dear, let us weep over her fate! she might have been so happy if she had loved you!"

To divert my thoughts from that occurrence, I formed the plan of taking a journey with Nicette. That would complete her training; the sight of Switzerland and Italy is always profitable to those who can think and remember.

Nicette was ready to go with me; wherever she could be with me, she was perfectly happy; it mattered little to her under what sky or in what climate we were to pa.s.s our lives. To her I was the world, pleasure, happiness. Ah! Nicette! love me so always! If you should ever be false to me, then I should know that no one on earth is worthy of love or faith.

We started in a berlin which I had bought, so that we were free to halt wherever some monument should arouse our admiration, or some fact of history our interest; that is the only agreeable and profitable way to travel.

We made the tour of Switzerland. I was anxious to show Nicette the splendors of Mont Cenis, and we stopped at an inn near the foot of the mountain. I observed that there was a great commotion in the house. I ordered a room, and the maid who showed us the way to it kept uttering exclamations.

"What has happened here, in heaven's name?" I asked her; "you all seem much excited. You have guests here, I suppose?"

"Yes, monsieur, a party of foreigners arrived this morning, to climb the mountain; there are Englishmen and Frenchmen and Russians, a whole party of sightseers, in fact. But that isn't what distresses us so. You see, monsieur, this morning before breakfast all these gentlemen were together, and they began to talk about tables d'hote. One man said that he liked them because he ate very fast; another declared that he was a better eater than any of the rest, and that he'd eat six eggs before breakfast and, even then, eat faster than anyone; they laughed at him, so he bet ten louis, and an Englishman took the bet. The poor man ordered hard-boiled eggs; he ate them, and then began his breakfast; oh!

he went at it in fine style, I tell you! and so he won his ten louis.

But just after, he turned yellow, red, and blue; they had to put him to bed, and instead of climbing the mountain he's likely to die on our hands."

"It's an Englishman, of course, who undertook that pretty trick?"

"No, monsieur; a Frenchman."

"A Frenchman!"

"If you want to see him, everybody's standing round his bed; everyone has some remedy to save his life."

I was curious to see the fellow. I left Nicette and bade the girl show me to the dying man's room. As I entered, he breathed his last, as a result of his wager. I glanced at his face, and recognized my neighbor Raymond.