X

The Duchess silenced the Vidame with a look; if Montriveau could

have seen that glance, he would have forgiven all.

"It would be very effective on the stage," remarked the Duc de

Grandlieu, "but it all amounts to nothing when your jointure and

position and independence is concerned.  You are not grateful, my

dear niece.  You will not find many families where the relatives

have courage enough to teach the wisdom gained by experience, and

to make rash young heads listen to reason.  Renounce your

salvation in two minutes, if it pleases you to damn yourself;

well and good; but reflect well beforehand when it comes to

renouncing your income.  I know of no confessor who remits the

pains of poverty.  I have a right, I think, to speak in this way

to you; for if you are ruined, I am the one person who can offer

you a refuge.  I am almost an uncle to Langeais, and I alone have

a right to put him in the wrong."

The Duc de Navarreins roused himself from painful reflections.

"Since you speak of feeling, my child," he said, "let me

remind you that a woman who bears your name ought to be moved by

sentiments which do not touch ordinary people.  Can you wish to

give an advantage to the Liberals, to those Jesuits of

Robespierre's that are doing all they can to vilify the noblesse?

Some things a Navarreins cannot do without failing in duty to his

house.  You would not be alone in your dishonour"

"Come, come!" said the Princess.  "Dishonour?  Do not make

such a fuss about the journey of an empty carriage, children, and

leave me alone with Antoinette.  Ail three of you come and dine

with me.  I will undertake to arrange matters suitably.  You men

understand nothing; you are beginning to talk sourly already, and

I have no wish to see a quarrel between you and my dear child.

Do me the pleasure to go."

The three gentlemen probably guessed the Princess's intentions;

they took their leave.  M. de Navarreins kissed his daughter on

the forehead with, "Come, be good, dear child.  It is not too

late yet if you choose."

"Couldn't we find some good fellow in the family to pick a

quarrel with this Montriveau?" said the Vidame, as they went

downstairs.

When the two women were alone, the Princess beckoned her niece to

a little low chair by her side.

"My pearl," said she, "in this world below, I know nothing

worse calumniated than God and the eighteenth century; for as I

look back over my own young days, I do not recollect that a

single duchess trampled the proprieties underfoot as you have

just done.  Novelists and scribblers brought the reign of Louis

XV into disrepute.  Do not believe them.  The du Barry, my dear,

was quite as good as the Widow Scarron, and the more agreeable

woman of the two.  In my time a woman could keep her dignity

among her gallantries.  Indiscretion was the ruin of us, and the

beginning of all the mischief.  The philosophists--the nobodies

whom we admitted into our salons--had no more gratitude or sense

of decency than to make an inventory of our hearts, to traduce us

one and all, and to rail against the age by way of a return for

our kindness.  The people are not in a position to judge of

anything whatsoever; they looked at the facts, not at the form.

But the men and women of those times, my heart, were quite as

remarkable as at any other period of the Monarchy.  Not one of

your Werthers, none of your notabilities, as they are called,

never a one of your men in yellow kid gloves and trousers that

disguise the poverty of their legs, would cross Europe in the

dress of a travelling hawker to brave the daggers of a Duke of

Modena, and to shut himself up in the dressing-room of the

Regent's daughter at the risk of his life.  Not one of your

little consumptive patients with their tortoiseshell eyeglasses

would hide himself in a closet for six weeks, like Lauzun, to

keep up his mistress's courage while she was lying in of her

child.  There was more passion in M. de Jaucourt's little finger

than in your whole race of higglers that leave a woman to better

themselves elsewhere!  Just tell me where to find the page that

would be cut in pieces and buried under the floorboards for one

kiss on the Konigsmark's gloved finger!

"Really, it would seem today that the roles are exchanged, and

women are expected to show their devotion for men.  These modern

gentlemen are worth less, and think more of themselves.  Believe

me, my dear, all these adventures that have been made public, and

now are turned against our good Louis XV, were kept quite secret

at first.  If it had not been for a pack of poetasters,

scribblers, and moralists, who hung about our waiting-women, and

took down their slanders, our epoch would have appeared in

literature as a well-conducted age.  I am justifying the century

and not its fringe.  Perhaps a hundred women of quality were

lost; but for every one, the rogues set down ten, like the

gazettes after a battle when they count up the losses of the

beaten side.  And in any case I do not know that the Revolution

and the Empire can reproach us; they were coarse, dull,

licentious times.  Faugh! it is revolting.  Those are the

brothels of French history.

"This preamble, my dear child," she continued after a pause,

"brings me to the thing that I have to say.  If you care for

Montriveau, you are quite at liberty to love him at your ease,

and as much as you can.  I know by experience that, unless you

are locked up (but locking people up is out of fashion now), you

will do as you please; I should have done the same at your age.

Only, sweetheart, I should not have given up my right to be the

mother of future Ducs de Langeais.  So mind appearances.  The

Vidame is right.  No man is worth a single one of the sacrifices

which we are foolish enough to make for their love.  Put yourself

in such a position that you may still be M. de Langeais's wife,

in case you should have the misfortune to repent.  When you are

an old woman, you will be very glad to hear mass said at Court,

and not in some provincial convent.  Therein lies the whole

question.  A single imprudence means an allowance and a wandering

life; it means that you are at the mercy of your lover; it means

that you must put up with insolence from women that are not so

honest, precisely because they have been very vulgarly

sharp-witted.  It would be a hundred times better to go to

Montriveau's at night in a cab, and disguised, instead of sending

your carriage in broad daylight.  You are a little fool, my dear

child!  Your carriage flattered his vanity; your person would

have ensnared his heart.  All this that I have said is just and

true; but, for my own part, I do not blame you.  You are two

centuries behind the times with your false ideas of greatness.

There, leave us to arrange your affairs, and say that Montriveau

made your servants drunk to gratify his vanity and to compromise

you"

The Duchess rose to her feet with a spring.  "In Heaven's name,

aunt, do not slander him!"

The old Princess's eyes flashed.

"Dear child," she said, "I should have liked to spare such of

your illusions as were not fatal.  But there must be an end of

all illusions now.  You would soften me if I were not so old.

Come, now, do not vex him, or us, or anyone else.  I will

undertake to satisfy everybody; but promise me not to permit

yourself a single step henceforth until you have consulted me.

Tell me all, and perhaps I may bring it all right again."

"Aunt, I promise"

"To tell me everything?"

"Yes, everything.  Everything that can be told."

"But, my sweetheart, it is precisely what cannot be told that I

want to know.  Let us understand each other thoroughly.  Come,

let me put my withered old lips on your beautiful forehead.  No;

let me do as I wish.  I forbid you to kiss my bones.  Old people

have a courtesy of their own...  There, take me down to my

carriage," she added, when she had kissed her niece.

"Then may I go to him in disguise, dear aunt?"

"Why--yes.  The story can always be denied," said the old

Princess.

This was the one idea which the Duchess had clearly grasped in

the sermon.  When Mme de Chauvry was seated in the corner of her

carriage, Mme de Langeais bade her a graceful adieu and went up

to her room.  She was quite happy again.

"My person would have snared his heart; my aunt is right; a man

cannot surely refuse a pretty woman when she understands how to

offer herself."

That evening, at the Elysee-Bourbon, the Duc de Navarreins, M. de

Pamiers, M. de Marsay, M. de Grandlieu, and the Duc de

Maufrigneuse triumphantly refuted the scandals that were

circulating with regard to the Duchesse de Langeais.  So many

officers and other persons had seen Montriveau walking in the

Tuileries that morning, that the silly story was set down to

chance, which takes all that is offered.  And so, in spite of the

fact that the Duchess's carriage had waited before Montriveau's

door, her character became as clear and as spotless as Mambrino's

sword after Sancho had polished it up.

But, at two o'clock, M. de Ronquerolles passed Montriveau in a

deserted alley, and said with a smile, "She is coming on, is

your Duchess.  Go on, keep it up!" he added, and gave a

significant cut of the riding whip to his mare, who sped off like

a bullet down the avenue.

Two days after the fruitless scandal, Mme de Langeais wrote to M.

de Montriveau.  That letter, like the preceding ones, remained

unanswered.  This time she took her own measures, and bribed M.

de Montriveau's man, Auguste.  And so at eight o'clock that

evening she was introduced into Armand's apartment.  It was not

the room in which that secret scene had passed; it was entirely

different.  The Duchess was told that the General would not be at

home that night.  Had he two houses?  The man would give no

answer.  Mme de Langeais had bought the key of the room, but not

the man's whole loyalty.

When she was left alone she saw her fourteen letters lying on an

old-fashioned stand, all of them uncreased and unopened.  He had

not read them.  She sank into an easy-chair, and for a while she

lost consciousness.  When she came to herself, Auguste was

holding vinegar for her to inhale.

"A carriage; quick!" she ordered.

The carriage came.  She hastened downstairs with convulsive

speed, and left orders that no one was to be admitted.  For

twenty-four hours she lay in bed, and would have no one near her

but her woman, who brought her a cup of orange-flower water from

time to time.  Suzette heard her mistress moan once or twice, and

caught a glimpse of tears in the brilliant eyes, now circled with

dark shadows.

The next day, amid despairing tears, Mme de Langeais took her

resolution.  Her man of business came for an interview, and no

doubt received instructions of some kind.  Afterwards she sent

for the Vidame de Pamiers; and while she waited, she wrote a

letter to M. de Montriveau.  The Vidame punctually came towards

two o'clock that afternoon, to find his young cousin looking

white and worn, but resigned; never had her divine loveliness

been more poetic than now in the languor of her agony.

"You owe this assignation to your eighty-four years, dear

cousin," she said.  "Ah! do not smile, I beg of you, when an

unhappy woman has reached the lowest depths of wretchedness.  You

are a gentleman, and after the adventures of your youth you must

feel some indulgence for women."

"None whatever," said he.

"Indeed!"

"Everything is in their favour."

"Ah!  Well, you are one of the inner family circle; possibly you

will be the last relative, the last friend whose hand I shall

press, so I can ask your good offices.  Will you, dear Vidame, do

me a service which I could not ask of my own father, nor of my

uncle Grandlieu, nor of any woman?  You cannot fail to

understand.  I beg of you to do my bidding, and then to forget

what you have done, whatever may come of it.  It is this:  Will

you take this letter and go to M. de Montriveau? will you see him

yourself, give it into his hands, and ask him, as you men can ask

things between yourselves--for you have a code of honour between

man and man which you do not use with us, and a different way of

regarding things between yourselves--ask him if he will read this

letter?  Not in your presence.  Certain feelings men hide from

each other.  I give you authority to say, if you think it

necessary to bring him, that it is a question of life or death

for me.  If he deigns"

"DEIGNS!" repeated the Vidame.

"If he deigns to read it," the Duchess continued with dignity,

"say one thing more.  You will go to see him about five o'clock,

for I know that he will dine at home today at that time.  Very

good.  By way of answer he must come to see me.  If, three hours

afterwards, by eight o'clock, he does not leave his house, all

will be over.  The Duchesse de Langeais will have vanished from

the world.  I shall not be dead, dear friend, no, but no human

power will ever find me again on this earth.  Come and dine with

me; I shall at least have one friend with me in the last agony.

Yes, dear cousin, tonight will decide my fate; and whatever

happens to me, I pass through an ordeal by fire.  There! not a

word.  I will hear nothing of the nature of comment or

adviceLet us chat and laugh together," she added, holding

out a hand, which he kissed.  "We will be like two grey-headed

philosophers who have learned how to enjoy life to the last

moment.  I will look my best; I will be very enchanting for you.

You perhaps will be the last man to set eyes on the Duchesse de

Langeais."

The Vicomte bowed, took the letter, and went without a word.  At

five o'clock he returned.  His cousin had studied to please him,

and she looked lovely indeed.  The room was gay with flowers as

if for a festivity; the dinner was exquisite.  For the

grey-headed Vidame the Duchess displayed all the brilliancy of

her wit; she was more charming than she had ever been before.  At

first the Vidame tried to look on all these preparations as a

young woman's jest; but now and again the attempted illusion

faded, the spell of his fair cousin's charm was broken.  He

detected a shudder caused by some kind of sudden dread, and once

she seemed to listen during a pause.

"What is the matter?" he asked.

"Hush!" she said.

At seven o'clock the Duchess left him for a few minutes.  When

she came back again she was dressed as her maid might have

dressed for a journey.  She asked her guest to be her escort,

took his arm, sprang into a hackney coach, and by a quarter to

eight they stood outside M. de Montriveau's door.

Armand meantime had been reading the following letter:--

"MY FRIEND,--I went to your rooms for a few minutes without your

knowledge; I found my letters there, and took them away.  This

cannot be indifference, Armand, between us; and hatred would show

itself quite differently.  If you love me, make an end of this

cruel play, or you will kill me, and afterwards, learning how

much you were loved, you might be in despair.  If I have not

rightly understood you, if you have no feeling towards me but

aversion, which implies both contempt and disgust, then I give up

all hope.  A man never recovers from those feelings.  You will

have no regrets.  Dreadful though that thought may be, it will

comfort me in my long sorrow.  Regrets?  Oh, my Armand, may I

never know of them; if I thought that I had caused you a single

regretBut, no, I will not tell you what desolation I should

feel.  I should be living still, and I could not be your wife; it

would be too late!

"Now that I have given myself wholly to you in thought, to whom

else should I give myself?--to God.  The eyes that you loved for

a little while shall never look on another man's face; and may

the glory of God blind them to all besides.  I shall never hear

human voices more since I heard yours--so gentle at the first, so

terrible yesterday; for it seems to me that I am still only on

the morrow of your vengeance.  And now may the will of God

consume me.  Between His wrath and yours, my friend, there will

be nothing left for me but a little space for tears and prayers.

"Perhaps you wonder why I write to you?  Ah! do not think ill of

me if I keep a gleam of hope, and give one last sigh to happy

life before I take leave of it forever.  I am in a hideous

position.  I feel all the inward serenity that comes when a great

resolution has been taken, even while I hear the last growlings

of the storm.  When you went out on that terrible adventure which

so drew me to you, Armand, you went from the desert to the oasis

with a good guide to show you the way.  Well, I am going out of

the oasis into the desert, and you are a pitiless guide to me.

And yet you only, my friend, can understand how melancholy it is

to look back for the last time on happiness--to you, and you

only, I can make moan without a blush.  If you grant my entreaty,

I shall be happy; if you are inexorable, I shall expiate the

wrong that I have done.  After all, it is natural, is it not,

that a woman should wish to live, invested with all noble

feelings, in her friend's memory?  Oh! my one and only love, let

her to whom you gave life go down into the tomb in the belief

that she is great in your eyes.  Your harshness led me to

reflect; and now that I love you so, it seems to me that I am

less guilty than you think.  Listen to my justification, I owe it

to you; and you that are all the world to me, owe me at least a

moment's justice.

"I have learned by my own anguish all that I made you suffer by

my coquetry; but in those days I was utterly ignorant of love.

YOU know what the torture is, and you mete it out to me!  During

those first eight months that you gave me you never roused any

feeling of love in me.  Do you ask why this was so, my friend?  I

can no more explain it than I can tell you why I love you now.

Oh! certainly it flattered my vanity that I should be the subject

of your passionate talk, and receive those burning glances of

yours; but you left me cold.  No, I was not a woman; I had no

conception of womanly devotion and happiness.  Who was to blame?

You would have despised me, would you not, if I had given myself

without the impulse of passion?  Perhaps it is the highest height

to which we can rise--to give all and receive no joy; perhaps

there is no merit in yielding oneself to bliss that is foreseen

and ardently desired.  Alas, my friend, I can say this now; these

thoughts came to me when I played with you; and you seemed to me

so great even then that I would not have you owe the gift to

pityWhat is this that I have written?

"I have taken back all my letters; I am flinging them one by one

on the fire; they are burning.  You will never know what they

confessed--all the love and the passion and the madness

"I will say no more, Armand; I will stop.  I will not say

another word of my feelings.  If my prayers have not echoed from

my soul through yours, I also, woman that I am, decline to owe

your love to your pity.  It is my wish to be loved, because you

cannot choose but love me, or else to be left without mercy.  If

you refuse to read this letter, it shall be burnt.  If, after you

have read it, you do not come to me within three hours, to be

henceforth forever my husband, the one man in the world for me;

then I shall never blush to know that this letter is in your

hands, the pride of my despair will protect my memory from all

insult, and my end shall be worthy of my love.  When you see me

no more on earth, albeit I shall still be alive, you yourself

will not think without a shudder of the woman who, in three

hours' time, will live only to overwhelm you with her tenderness;

a woman consumed by a hopeless love, and faithful--not to

memories of past joys--but to a love that was slighted.

"The Duchesse de la Valliere wept for lost happiness and

vanished power; but the Duchesse de Langeais will be happy that

she may weep and be a power for you still.  Yes, you will regret

me.  I see clearly that I was not of this world, and I thank you

for making it clear to me.

"Farewell; you will never touch MY axe.  Yours was the

executioner's axe, mine is God's; yours kills, mine saves.  Your

love was but mortal, it could not endure disdain or ridicule;

mine can endure all things without growing weaker, it will last

eternally.  Ah!  I feel a sombre joy in crushing you that believe

yourself so great; in humbling you with the calm, indulgent smile

of one of the least among the angels that lie at the feet of God,

for to them is given the right and the power to protect and watch

over men in His name.  You have but felt fleeting desires, while

the poor nun will shed the light of her ceaseless and ardent

prayer about you, she will shelter you all your life long beneath

the wings of a love that has nothing of earth in it.

"I have a presentiment of your answer; our trysting place shall

be--in heaven.  Strength and weakness can both enter there, dear

Armand; the strong and the weak are bound to suffer.  This

thought soothes the anguish of my final ordeal.  So calm am I

that I should fear that I had ceased to love you if I were not

about to leave the world for your sake.                         

"ANTOINETTE."

"Dear Vidame," said the Duchess as they reached Montriveau's

house, "do me the kindness to ask at the door whether he is at

home."  The Vidame, obedient after the manner of the eighteenth

century to a woman's wish, got out, and came back to bring his

cousin an affirmative answer that sent a shudder through her.

She grasped his hand tightly in hers, suffered him to kiss her on

either cheek, and begged him to go at once.  He must not watch

her movements nor try to protect her.  "But the people passing

in the street," he objected.

"No one can fail in respect to me," she said.  It was the last

word spoken by the Duchess and the woman of fashion.

The Vidame went.  Mme de Langeais wrapped herself about in her

cloak, and stood on the doorstep until the clocks struck eight.

The last stroke died away.  The unhappy woman waited ten, fifteen

minutes; to the last she tried to see a fresh humiliation in the

delay, then her faith ebbed.  She turned to leave the fatal

threshold.

"Oh, God!" the cry broke from her in spite of herself; it was

the first word spoken by the Carmelite.

Montriveau and some of his friends were talking together.  He

tried to hasten them to a conclusion, but his clock was slow, and

by the time he started out for the Hotel de Langeais the Duchess

was hurrying on foot through the streets of Paris, goaded by the

dull rage in her heart.  She reached the Boulevard d'Enfer, and

looked out for the last time through falling tears on the noisy,

smoky city that lay below in a red mist, lighted up by its own

lamps.  Then she hailed a cab, and drove away, never to return.

When the Marquis de Montriveau reached the Hotel de Langeais, and

found no trace of his mistress, he thought that he had been

duped.  He hurried away at once to the Vidame, and found that

worthy gentleman in the act of slipping on his flowered

dressing-gown, thinking the while of his fair cousin's happiness.

Montriveau gave him one of the terrific glances that produced the

effect of an electric shock on men and women alike.

"Is it possible that you have lent yourself to some cruel hoax,

monsieur?" Montriveau exclaimed.  "I have just come from Mme de

Langeais's house; the servants say that she is out."

"Then a great misfortune has happened, no doubt," returned the

Vidame, "and through your fault.  I left the Duchess at your

door"

"When?"

"At a quarter to eight."

"Good evening," returned Montriveau, and he hurried home to ask

the porter whether he had seen a lady standing on the doorstep

that evening.

"Yes, my Lord Marquis, a handsome woman, who seemed very much

put out.  She was crying like a Magdalen, but she never made a

sound, and stood as upright as a post.  Then at last she went,

and my wife and I that were watching her while she could not see

us, heard her say, `Oh, God!' so that it went to our hearts,

asking your pardon, to hear her say it."

Montriveau, in spite of all his firmness, turned pale at those

few words.  He wrote a few lines to Ronquerolles, sent off the

message at once, and went up to his rooms.  Ronquerolles came

just about midnight.

Armand gave him the Duchess's letter to read.

"Well?" asked Ronquerolles.

"She was here at my door at eight o'clock; at a quarter-past

eight she had gone.  I have lost her, and I love her.  Oh! if my

life were my own, I could blow my brains out."

"Pooh, pooh!  Keep cool," said Ronquerolles.  "Duchesses do

not fly off like wagtails.  She cannot travel faster than three

leagues an hour, and tomorrow we will ride six.--Confound it!

Mme de Langeais is no ordinary woman," he continued.  "Tomorrow

we will all of us mount and ride.  The police will put us on her

track during the day.  She must have a carriage; angels of that

sort have no wings.  We shall find her whether she is on the road

or hidden in Paris.  There is the semaphore.  We can stop her.

You shall be happy.  But, my dear fellow, you have made a

blunder, of which men of your energy are very often guilty.  They

judge others by themselves, and do not know the point when human

nature gives way if you strain the cords too tightly.  Why did

you not say a word to me sooner?  I would have told you to be

punctual.  Good-bye till tomorrow," he added, as Montriveau said

nothing.  "Sleep if you can," he added, with a grasp of the

hand.

But the greatest resources which society has ever placed at the

disposal of statesmen, kings, ministers, bankers, or any human

power, in fact, were all exhausted in vain.  Neither Montriveau

nor his friends could find any trace of the Duchess.  It was

clear that she had entered a convent.  Montriveau determined to

search, or to institute a search, for her through every convent

in the world.  He must have her, even at the cost of all the

lives in a town.  And in justice to this extraordinary man, it

must be said that his frenzied passion awoke to the same ardour

daily and lasted through five years.  Only in 1829 did the Duc de

Navarreins hear by chance that his daughter had travelled to

Spain as Lady Julia Hopwood's maid, that she had left her service

at Cadiz, and that Lady Julia never discovered that Mlle Caroline

was the illustrious duchess whose sudden disappearance filled the

minds of the highest society of Paris.

The feelings of the two lovers when they met again on either side

of the grating in the Carmelite convent should now be

comprehended to the full, and the violence of the passion

awakened in either soul will doubtless explain the catastrophe of

the story.

In 1823 the Duc de Langeais was dead, and his wife was free.

Antoinette de Navarreins was living, consumed by love, on a ledge

of rock in the Mediterranean; but it was in the Pope's power to

dissolve Sister Theresa's vows.  The happiness bought by so much

love might yet bloom for the two lovers.  These thoughts sent

Montriveau flying from Cadiz to Marseilles, and from Marseilles

to Paris.

A few months after his return to France, a merchant brig, fitted

out and munitioned for active service, set sail from the port of

Marseilles for Spain.  The vessel had been chartered by several

distinguished men, most of them Frenchmen, who, smitten with a

romantic passion for the East, wished to make a journey to those

lands.  Montriveau's familiar knowledge of Eastern customs made

him an invaluable travelling companion, and at the entreaty of

the rest he had joined the expedition; the Minister of War

appointed him lieutenant-general, and put him on the Artillery

Commission to facilitate his departure.

Twenty-fours hours later the brig lay to off the north-west shore

of an island within sight of the Spanish coast.  She had been

specially chosen for her shallow keel and light mastage, so that

she might lie at anchor in safety half a league away from the

reefs that secure the island from approach in this direction.  If

fishing vessels or the people on the island caught sight of the

brig, they were scarcely likely to feel suspicious of her at

once; and besides, it was easy to give a reason for her presence

without delay.  Montriveau hoisted the flag of the United States

before they came in sight of the island, and the crew of the

vessel were all American sailors, who spoke nothing but English.

One of M. de Montriveau's companions took the men ashore in the

ship's longboat, and made them so drunk at an inn in the little

town that they could not talk.  Then he gave out that the brig

was manned by treasure-seekers, a gang of men whose hobby was

well known in the United States; indeed, some Spanish writer had

written a history of them.  The presence of the brig among the

reefs was now sufficiently explained.  The owners of the vessel,

according to the self-styled boatswain's mate, were looking for

the wreck of a galleon which foundered thereabouts in 1778 with a

cargo of treasure from Mexico.  The people at the inn and the

authorities asked no more questions.

Armand, and the devoted friends who were helping him in his

difficult enterprise, were all from the first of the opinion that

there was no hope of rescuing or carrying off Sister Theresa by

force or stratagem from the side of the little town.  Wherefore

these bold spirits, with one accord, determined to take the bull

by the horns.  They would make a way to the convent at the most

seemingly inaccessible point; like General Lamarque, at the

storming of Capri, they would conquer Nature.  The cliff at the

end of the island, a sheer block of granite, afforded even less

hold than the rock of Capri.  So it seemed at least to

Montriveau, who had taken part in that incredible exploit, while

the nuns in his eyes were much more redoubtable than Sir Hudson

Lowe.  To raise a hubbub over carrying off the Duchess would

cover them with confusion.  They might as well set siege to the

town and convent, like pirates, and leave not a single soul to

tell of their victory.  So for them their expedition wore but two

aspects.  There should be a conflagration and a feat of arms that

should dismay all Europe, while the motives of the crime remained

unknown; or, on the other hand, a mysterious, aerial descent

which should persuade the nuns that the Devil himself had paid

them a visit.  They had decided upon the latter course in the

secret council held before they left Paris, and subsequently

everything had been done to insure the success of an expedition

which promised some real excitement to jaded spirits weary of

Paris and its pleasures.

An extremely light pirogue, made at Marseilles on a Malayan

model, enabled them to cross the reef, until the rocks rose from

out of the water.  Then two cables of iron wire were fastened

several feet apart between one rock and another.  These wire

ropes slanted upwards and downwards in opposite directions, so

that baskets of iron wire could travel to and fro along them; and

in this manner the rocks were covered with a system of baskets

and wire-cables, not unlike the filaments which a certain species

of spider weaves about a tree.  The Chinese, an essentially

imitative people, were the first to take a lesson from the work

of instinct.  Fragile as these bridges were, they were always

ready for use; high waves and the caprices of the sea could not

throw them out of working order; the ropes hung just sufficiently

slack, so as to present to the breakers that particular curve

discovered by Cachin, the immortal creator of the harbour at

Cherbourg.  Against this cunningly devised line the angry surge

is powerless; the law of that curve was a secret wrested from

Nature by that faculty of observation in which nearly all human

genius consists.

M. de Montriveau's companions were alone on board the vessel, and

out of sight of every human eye.  No one from the deck of a

passing vessel could have discovered either the brig hidden among

the reefs, or the men at work among the rocks; they lay below the

ordinary range of the most powerful telescope.  Eleven days were

spent in preparation, before the Thirteen, with all their

infernal power, could reach the foot of the cliffs.  The body of

the rock rose up straight from the sea to a height of thirty

fathoms.  Any attempt to climb the sheer wall of granite seemed

impossible; a mouse might as well try to creep up the slippery

sides of a plain china vase.  Still there was a cleft, a straight

line of fissure so fortunately placed that large blocks of wood

could be wedged firmly into it at a distance of about a foot

apart.  Into these blocks the daring workers drove iron cramps,

specially made for the purpose, with a broad iron bracket at the

outer end, through which a hole had been drilled.  Each bracket

carried a light deal board which corresponded with a notch made

in a pole that reached to the top of the cliffs, and was firmly

planted in the beach at their feet.  With ingenuity worthy of

these men who found nothing impossible, one of their number, a

skilled mathematician, had calculated the angle from which the

steps must start; so that from the middle they rose gradually,

like the sticks of a fan, to the top of the cliff, and descended

in the same fashion to its base.  That miraculously light, yet

perfectly firm, staircase cost them twenty-two days of toil.  A

little tinder and the surf of the sea would destroy all trace of

it forever in a single night.  A betrayal of the secret was

impossible; and all search for the violators of the convent was

doomed to failure.

At the top of the rock there was a platform with sheer precipice

on all sides.  The Thirteen, reconnoitring the ground with their

glasses from the masthead, made certain that though the ascent

was steep and rough, there would be no difficulty in gaining the

convent garden, where the trees were thick enough for a

hiding-place.  After such great efforts they would not risk the

success of their enterprise, and were compelled to wait till the

moon passed out of her last quarter.

For two nights Montriveau, wrapped in his cloak, lay out on the

rock platform.  The singing at vespers and matins filled him with

unutterable joy.  He stood under the wall to hear the music of

the organ, listening intently for one voice among the rest.  But

in spite of the silence, the confused effect of music was all

that reached his ears.  In those sweet harmonies defects of

execution are lost; the pure spirit of art comes into direct

communication with the spirit of the hearer, making no demand on

the attention, no strain on the power of listening.  Intolerable

memories awoke.  All the love within him seemed to break into

blossom again at the breath of that music; he tried to find

auguries of happiness in the air.  During the last night he sat

with his eyes fixed upon an ungrated window, for bars were not

needed on the side of the precipice.  A light shone there all

through the hours; and that instinct of the heart, which is

sometimes true, and as often false, cried within him, "She is

there!"

"She is certainly there!  Tomorrow she will be mine," he said

to himself, and joy blended with the slow tinkling of a bell that

began to ring.

Strange unaccountable workings of the heart!  The nun, wasted by

yearning love, worn out with tears and fasting, prayer and

vigils; the woman of nine-and-twenty, who had passed through

heavy trials, was loved more passionately than the lighthearted

girl, the woman of four-and-twenty, the sylphide, had ever been.

But is there not, for men of vigorous character, something

attractive in the sublime expression engraven on women's faces by

the impetuous stirrings of thought and misfortunes of no ignoble

kind?  Is there not a beauty of suffering which is the most

interesting of all beauty to those men who feel that within them

there is an inexhaustible wealth of tenderness and consoling pity

for a creature so gracious in weakness, so strong with love?  It

is the ordinary nature that is attracted by young, smooth,

pink-and-white beauty, or, in one word, by prettiness.  In some

faces love awakens amid the wrinkles carved by sorrow and the

ruin made by melancholy; Montriveau could not but feel drawn to

these.  For cannot a lover, with the voice of a great longing,

call forth a wholly new creature? a creature athrob with the life

but just begun breaks forth for him alone, from the outward form

that is fair for him, and faded for all the world besides.  Does

he not love two women?--One of them, as others see her, is pale

and wan and sad; but the other, the unseen love that his heart

knows, is an angel who understands life through feeling, and is

adorned in all her glory only for love's high festivals.

The General left his post before sunrise, but not before he had

heard voices singing together, sweet voices full of tenderness

sounding faintly from the cell.  When he came down to the foot of

the cliffs where his friends were waiting, he told them that

never in his life had he felt such enthralling bliss, and in the

few words there was that unmistakable thrill of repressed strong

feeling, that magnificent utterance which all men respect.

That night eleven of his devoted comrades made the ascent in the

darkness.  Each man carried a poniard, a provision of chocolate,

and a set of house-breaking tools.  They climbed the outer walls

with scaling-ladders, and crossed the cemetery of the convent.

Montriveau recognised the long, vaulted gallery through which he

went to the parlour, and remembered the windows of the room.  His

plans were made and adopted in a moment.  They would effect an

entrance through one of the windows in the Carmelite's half of

the parlour, find their way along the corridors, ascertain

whether the sister's names were written on the doors, find Sister

Theresa's cell, surprise her as she slept, and carry her off,

bound and gagged.  The programme presented no difficulties to men

who combined boldness and a convict's dexterity with the

knowledge peculiar to men of the world, especially as they would

not scruple to give a stab to ensure silence.

In two hours the bars were sawn through.  Three men stood on

guard outside, and two inside the parlour.  The rest, barefooted,

took up their posts along the corridor.  Young Henri de Marsay,

the most dexterous man among them, disguised by way of precaution

in a Carmelite's robe, exactly like the costume of the convent,

led the way, and Montriveau came immediately behind him.  The

clock struck three just as the two men reached the dormitory

cells.  They soon saw the position.  Everything was perfectly

quiet.  With the help of a dark lantern they read the names

luckily written on every door, together with the picture of a

saint or saints and the mystical words which every nun takes as a

kind of motto for the beginning of her new life and the

revelation of her last thought.  Montriveau reached Sister

Theresa's door and read the inscription, Sub invocatione sanctae

matris Theresae, and her motto, Adoremus in aeternum.  Suddenly

his companion laid a hand on his shoulder.  A bright light was

streaming through the chinks of the door.  M. de Ronquerolles

came up at that moment.

"All the nuns are in the church," he said; "they are beginning

the Office for the Dead."

"I will stay here," said Montriveau.  "Go back into the

parlour, and shut the door at the end of the passage."

He threw open the door and rushed in, preceded by his disguised

companion, who let down the veil over his face.

There before them lay the dead Duchess; her plank bed had been

laid on the floor of the outer room of her cell, between two

lighted candles.  Neither Montriveau nor de Marsay spoke a word

or uttered a cry; but they looked into each other's faces.  The

General's dumb gesture tried to say, "Let us carry her away!"

"Quickly" shouted Ronquerolles, "the procession of nuns is

leaving the church.  You will be caught!"

With magical swiftness of movement, prompted by an intense

desire, the dead woman was carried into the convent parlour,

passed through the window, and lowered from the walls before the

Abbess, followed by the nuns, returned to take up Sister

Theresa's body.  The sister left in charge had imprudently left

her post; there were secrets that she longed to know; and so busy

was she ransacking the inner room, that she heard nothing, and

was horrified when she came back to find that the body was gone.

Before the women, in their blank amazement, could think of making

a search, the Duchess had been lowered by a cord to the foot of

the crags, and Montriveau's companions had destroyed all traces

of their work.  By nine o'clock that morning there was not a sign

to show that either staircase or wire-cables had ever existed,

and Sister Theresa's body had been taken on board.  The brig came

into the port to ship her crew, and sailed that day.

Montriveau, down in the cabin, was left alone with Antoinette de

Navarreins.  For some hours it seemed as if her dead face was

transfigured for him by that unearthly beauty which the calm of

death gives to the body before it perishes.

"Look here," said Ronquerolles when Montriveau reappeared on

deck, "THAT was a woman once, now it is nothing.  Let us tie a

cannon ball to both feet and throw the body overboard; and if

ever you think of her again, think of her as of some book that

you read as a boy."

"Yes," assented Montriveau, "it is nothing now but a dream."

"That is sensible of you.  Now, after this, have passions; but

as for love, a man ought to know how to place it wisely; it is

only a woman's last love that can satisfy a man's first love."