You came to
Havre, poor beauty, to find me, and fled believing yourself deceived;
you could not read my despair through my fictitious joy; you took my
mask for my real countenance, the intoxication of my body for the
oblivion of my soul! In the midst of my orgie, at the very moment when
my foot pressed on the Ethiop's body, your azure eyes illumined my
dream, your blonde tresses rippled before me like golden waters of
Paradise; thoughts of you filled my mind like a vase with divine
essence! never have I loved you better; I loved you better than the
condemned man, standing on the last step of the scaffold, loves life,
than Satan loves heaven from the depths of hell! My heart, if opened,
would have exhibited your name written in all its fibres, like the grain
of wood which runs through the whole tree. Every particle of my being
belonged to you; thoughts of you pervaded me, in every sense, as light
passes through the air. Your life was substituted for mine; I no longer
possessed either free will or wish.

For a moment you paused upon the brink of the abyss, and started back
affrighted; for no woman can gaze, unflinchingly, into the depths of
man's heart; precipices always have frightened you--dear angel, as if
you had not wings! If you had paused an instant longer, you would have
seen far, far in the gloom in a firmament of bright stars, your adored
image.

Vain regrets! useless lamentation! The damp and dark earth covers her
delicate form! Her beautiful eyes, her pure brow, her fascinating smile
we shall never see again--never--never--if we live thousands of years.
Every hour that passes but widens the distance between us. Her beauty
will fade in the tomb, her name be lost in oblivion! For soon we shall
have disappeared, pale forms bending over a marble tomb!

It is very sad, sinister and terrible, but yet it is best so. See her in
the arms of another: Roger! what have we done to God to be damned
alive! I can pity Raymond, since death separates him from Louise. May he
forgive me! He will, for he was a grand, a noble, a perfect friend. We
both failed to appreciate him, as a matter of course; folly and baseness
are alone comprehended here below!

We ran a desperate race for happiness! One alone attained it--dead!

EDGAR DE MEILHAN.

THE END.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Cross of Berny, by Emile de Girardin

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