sight of that father,
the secret of whose insanity was known to us alone, now to be left sole
guardian of those delicate beings, brought mute entreaties to her face,
which fell upon my heart like sacred fire. Before receiving extreme
unction she asked pardon of her servants if by a hasty word she had
sometimes hurt them; she asked their prayers and commended each one,
individually, to the count; she nobly confessed that during the last two
months she had uttered complaints that were not Christian and might
have shocked them; she had repulsed her children and clung to life
unworthily; but she attributed this failure of submission to the will
of God to her intolerable sufferings. Finally, she publicly thanked the
Abbe Birotteau with heartfelt warmth for having shown her the illusion
of all earthly things.

When she ceased to speak, prayers were said again, and the curate of
Sache gave her the viaticum. A few moments later her breathing became
difficult; a film overspread her eyes, but soon they cleared again; she
gave me a last look and died to the eyes of earth, hearing perhaps the
symphony of our sobs. As her last sigh issued from her lips,--the effort
of a life that was one long anguish,--I felt a blow within me that
struck on all my faculties. The count and I remained beside the bier all
night with the two abbes and the curate, watching, in the glimmer of the
tapers, the body of the departed, now so calm, laid upon the mattress of
her bed, where once she had suffered cruelly. It was my first communion
with death. I remained the whole of that night with my eyes fixed
on Henriette, spell-bound by the pure expression that came from the
stilling of all tempests, by the whiteness of that face where still I
saw the traces of her innumerable affections, although it made no answer
to my love. What majesty in that silence, in that coldness! How many
thoughts they expressed! What beauty in that cold repose, what power in
that immobility! All the past was there and futurity had begun. Ah! I
loved her dead as much as I had loved her living. In the morning the
count went to bed; the three wearied priests fell asleep in that heavy
hour of dawn so well known to those who watch. I could then, without
witnesses, kiss that sacred brow with all the love I had never been
allowed to utter.

The third day, in a cool autumn morning, we followed the countess to her
last home. She was carried by the old huntsman, the two Martineaus, and
Ma