e thought that
makes all women happy. Yes, my grave will be your heart. After
this childhood I have just related, has not my life flowed on
within that heart? Dead, you will never drive me forth. I am proud
of that rare life! You will know me only in the flower of my
youth; I leave you regrets without disillusions. Jules, it is a
happy death.

"You, who have so fully understood me, may I ask one thing more of
you,--superfluous request, perhaps, the fulfilment of a woman's
fancy, the prayer of a jealousy we all must feel,--I pray you to
burn all that especially belonged to _us_, destroy our chamber,
annihilate all that is a memory of our happiness.

"Once more, farewell,--the last farewell! It is all love, and so
will be my parting thought, my parting breath."

When Jules had read that letter there came into his heart one of those
wild frenzies of which it is impossible to describe the awful anguish.
All sorrows are individual; their effects are not subjected to any fixed
rule. Certain men will stop their ears to hear nothing; some women close
their eyes hoping never to see again; great and splendid souls are met
with who fling themselves into sorrow as into an abyss. In the matter of
despair, all is true.

CHAPTER V. CONCLUSION

Jules escaped from his brother's house and returned home, wishing
to pass the night beside his wife, and see till the last moment that
celestial creature. As he walked along with an indifference to life
known only to those who have reached the last degree of wretchedness,
he thought of how, in India, the law ordained that widows should die; he
longed to die. He was not yet crushed; the fever of his grief was still
upon him. He reached his home and went up into the sacred chamber; he
saw his Clemence on the bed of death, beautiful, like a saint, her hair
smoothly laid upon her forehead, her hands joined, her body wrapped
already in its shroud. Tapers were lighted, a priest was praying,
Josephine kneeling in a corner, wept, and, near the bed, were two men.
One was Ferragus. He stood erect, motionless, gazing at his daughter
with dry eyes; his head you might have taken for bronze: he did not see
Jules.

The other man was Jacquet,--Jacquet, to whom Madame Jules had been ever
kind. Jacquet felt for her one of those respectful friendships which
rejoice the untroubled heart; a gentle passion; love without its desires
and its storms. He had come to pay his deb