Ah, Monsieur Raynal, my dear friend, you were always generous: you will pity and kill me.I have dishonored the name you gave me to keep: I am neither Beaurepaire nor Raynal.Do pray kill me, monsieur--Jean, do pray release me from my life!"And she crawled to his knees and embraced them, and kissed his hand, and pleaded more piteously for death, than others have begged for life.
Raynal stood like a rock: he was pale, and drew his breath audibly, but not a word.Then came a sight scarce less terrible than Josephine's despair.The baroness, looking and moving twenty years older than an hour before, tottered across the room to Raynal.
"Sir, you whom I have called my son, but whom I will never presume so to call again, I thought I had lived long enough never to have to blush again.I loved you, monsieur.I prayed every day for you.
But she who WAS my daughter was not of my mind.Monsieur, I have never knelt but to God and to my king, and I kneel to you: forgive us, sir, forgive us!"She tried to go down on her knees.He raised her with his strong arm, but he could not speak.She turned on the others.
"So this is the secret you were hiding from me! This secret has not killed you all.Oh! I shall not live under its shame so long as you have.Chateau of Beaurepaire--nest of treason, ingratitude, and immodesty--I loathe you as much as once I loved you.I will go and hide my head, and die elsewhere.""Stay, madame!" said he, in a voice whose depth and dignity was such that it seemed impossible to disobey it."It was sudden--I was shaken--but I am myself again.""Oh, show some pity!" cried Rose.
"I shall try to be just."
There was a long, trembling silence; and during that silence and terrible agitation, one figure stood firm among those quaking, beating hearts, like a rock with the waves breaking round it--the MAN OF PRINCIPLE among the creatures of impulse.
He raised Josephine from her knees, and placed her all limp and powerless in an arm-chair.To her frenzy had now succeeded a sickness and feebleness like unto death.
"Widow Dujardin," said he, in a broken voice, "listen to me."She moaned a sort of assent.
"Your mistake has been not trusting me.I was your friend, and not a selfish friend.I was not enough in love with you to destroy your happiness.Besides, I despise that sort of love.If you had told me all, I would have spared you this misery.By the present law, civil contracts of marriage can be dissolved by mutual consent."At this the baroness uttered some sign of surprise.
"Ah!" continued Raynal, sadly, "you are aristocrats, and cannot keep pace with the times.This very day our mere contract shall be formally dissolved.Indeed, it ceases to exist since both parties are resolved to withdraw from it.So, if you married Dujardin in a church, you are Madame Dujardin at this moment, and his child is legitimate.What does she say?"This question was to Rose, for what Josephine uttered sounded like a mere articulate moan.But Rose's quick ear had caught words, and she replied, all in tears, "My poor sister is blessing you, sir.We all bless you.""She does not understand my position," said Raynal.He then walked up to Josephine, and leaning over her arm, and speaking rather loud, under the impression that her senses were blunted by grief, he said, "Look here: Colonel Dujardin, your husband, deliberately, and with his eyes open, sacrificed his life for me, and for his own heroic sense of honor.Now, it is my turn.If that hero stood here, and asked me for all the blood in my body, I would give it him.He is gone; but, dying for me, he has left me his widow and his child;they remain under my wing.To protect them is my pride, and my only consolation.I am going to the mayor to annul our unlucky contract in due form, and make us brother and sister instead.But," turning to the baroness, "don't you think to escape me as your daughter has done: no, no, old lady, once a mother, always a mother.Stir from your son's home if you dare!"And with these words, in speaking which his voice had recovered its iron firmness, he strode out at the door, superb in manhood and principle, and every eye turned with wonder and admiration after him.Even when he was gone they gazed at the door by which a creature so strangely noble had disappeared.
The baroness was about to follow him without taking any notice of Josephine.But Rose caught her by the gown."O mother, speak to poor Josephine: bid her live."The baroness only made a gesture of horror and disgust, and turned her back on them both.
Josephine, who had tottered up from her seat at Rose's words, sank heavily down again, and murmured, "Ah! the grave holds all that love me now."Rose ran to her side."Cruel Josephine! what, do not I love you?
Mother, will you not help me persuade her to live? Oh! if she dies, I will die too; you will kill both your children."Stern and indignant as the baroness was, yet these words pierced her heart.She turned with a piteous, half apologetic air to Edouard and Aubertin."Gentlemen," said she, "she has been foolish, not guilty.Heaven pardons the best of us.Surely a mother may forgive her child." And with this nature conquered utterly; and she held out her arms, wide, wide, as is a mother's heart.Her two erring children rushed sobbing violently into them; and there was not a dry eye in the room for a long time.
After this, Josephine's heart almost ceased to beat.Fear and misgivings, and the heavy sense of deceit gnawing an honorable heart, were gone.Grief reigned alone in the pale, listless, bereaved widow.
The marriage was annulled before the mayor; and, three days afterwards, Raynal, by his influence, got the consummated marriage formally allowed in Paris.
With a delicacy for which one would hardly have given him credit, he never came near Beaurepaire till all this was settled; but he brought the document from Paris that made Josephine the widow Dujardin, and her boy the heir of Beaurepaire; and the moment she was really Madame Dujardin he avoided her no longer; and he became a comfort to her instead of a terror.
