the history of louis

history of louis part 2

"Citoyenne," said he at last, "I am here to see that the laws of the Republic are carried out--" Mme. de Dey shuddered. "Have you nothing to tell me?" "Nothing!" she answered, in amazement. "Ah! madame," cried the prosecutor, sitting down beside her and changing his tone. "At this moment, for lack of a word, one of us--you or I--may carry our heads to the scaffold. I have watched your character, your soul, your manner, too closely to share the error into which you have managed to lead your visitors to-night. You are expecting your son, I could not doubt it." The Countess made an involuntary sign of denial, but her face had grown white and drawn with the struggle to maintain the composure that she did not feel, and no tremor was lost on the merciless prosecutor. "Very well," the Revolutionary official went on, "receive him; but do not let him stay under your roof after seven o'clock to-morrow morning; for to-morrow, as soon as it is light, I shall come with a denunciation that I will have made out, and--" She looked at him, and the dull misery in her eyes would have softened a tiger. "I will make it clear that the denunciation was false by making a thorough search," he went on in a gentle voice; "my report shall be such that you will be safe from any subsequent suspicion. I shall make mention of your patriotic gifts, your civism, and _all_ of us will be safe." Mme. de Dey, fearful of a trap, sat motionless, her face afire, her tongue frozen. A knock at the door rang through the house "Oh!..." cried the terrified mother, falling upon her knees; "save him! save him!" "Yes, let us save him!" returned the public prosecutor, and his eyes grew bright as he looked at her, "if it costs _us_ our lives!" "Lost!" she wailed. The prosecutor raised her politely. "Madame," said he with a flourish of eloquence, "to your own free will alone would I owe--" "Madame, he is--" cried Brigitte, thinking that her mistress was alone. At the sight of the public prosecutor, the old servant's joy-flushed countenance became haggard and impassive. "Who is it, Brigitte?" the prosecutor asked kindly, as if he too were in the secret of the household. "A conscript that the mayor has sent here for a night's lodging," the woman replied, holding out the billet. "So it is," said the prosecutor, when he had read the slip of paper. "A battalion is coming here to-night." And he went. The Countess's need to believe in the faith of her sometime attorney was so great, that she dared not entertain any suspicion of him. She fled upstairs; she felt scarcely strength enough to stand; she opened the door, and sprang, half dead with fear, into her son's arms. "Oh! my child! my child!" she sobbed, covering him with almost frenzied kisses. "Madame!..." said a stranger's voice. "Oh! it is not he!" she cried, shrinking away in terror, and she stood face to face with the conscript, gazing at him with haggard eyes.

haggard eyes. "_O saint bon Dieu!_ how like he is!" cried Brigitte. There was silence for a moment; even the stranger trembled at the sight of Mme. de Dey's face. "Ah! monsieur," she said, leaning on the arm of Brigitte's husband, feeling for the first time the full extent of a sorrow that had all but killed her at its first threatening; "ah! monsieur, I cannot stay to see you any longer ... permit my servants to supply my place, and to see that you have all that you want." She went down to her own room, Brigitte and the old serving-man half carrying her between them. The housekeeper set her mistress in a chair, and broke out: "What, madame! is that man to sleep in Monsieur Auguste's bed, and wear Monsieur Auguste's slippers, and eat the pasty that I made for Monsieur Auguste? Why, if they were to guillotine me for it, I--" "Brigitte!" cried Mme. de Dey. Brigitte said no more. "Hold your tongue, chatterbox," said her husband, in a low voice; "do you want to kill madame?" A sound came from the conscript's room as he drew his chair to the table. "I shall not stay here," cried Mme. de Dey; "I shall go into the conservatory; I shall hear better there if anyone passes in the night." She still wavered between the fear that she had lost her son and the hope of seeing him once more. That night was hideously silent. Once, for the Countess, there was an awful interval, when the battalion of conscripts entered the town, and the men went by, one by one, to their lodgings. Every footfall, every sound in the street, raised hopes to be disappointed; but it was not for long, the dreadful quiet succeeded again. Toward morning the Countess was forced to return to her room. Brigitte, ever keeping watch over her mistress's movements, did not see her come out again; and when she went, she found the Countess lying there dead. "I expect she heard that conscript," cried Brigitte, "walking about Monsieur Auguste's room, whistling that accursed _Marseillaise_ of theirs while he dressed, as if he had been in a stable! That must have killed her." But it was a deeper and a more solemn emotion, and doubtless some dreadful vision, that had caused Mme. de Dey's death; for at the very hour when she died at Carentan, her son was shot in le Morbihan. * * * * * This tragical story may be added to all the instances on record of the workings of sympathies uncontrolled by the laws of time and space. These observations, collected with scientific curiosity by a few isolated individuals, will one day serve as documents on which to base the foundations of a new science which hitherto has lacked its man of genius