EPILOGUE. I. THE ABBESS OF SAINTE-RADEGONDE DE PEYSSAC.

A month had passed away since the events we have described. One Sunday evening, after vespers, the Abbess of Sainte-Radegonde de Peyssac came forth last from the church at the end of the convent garden, now and then turning her tear-reddened eyes toward a dark thicket of yews and fir-trees, with such an expression of longing and regret that one would have said that her heart was in that spot and seeking to detain her there.

Before her, the nuns, veiled and silent, walking in single file along the path to the convent, seemed like a long procession of phantoms returning to the tomb, followed by another phantom who left the earth behind regretfully.

One by one the nuns disappeared beneath the sombre arches of the cloister; the superior followed them with her eyes until the last one had entered, then let them fall upon the capital of a Gothic column half buried in the grass, with an indescribable expression of hopeless despair.

"Oh, my God! my God!" said she, placing her hand on her heart, "thou art my witness that I cannot endure this life, of which I did not realize the true nature. I sought solitude and obscurity in the cloister, and not the constant scrutiny of all these curious eyes."

With that she raised her head, and took a step toward the little clump of firs.

"After all," said she, "what matters the world to me, since I have denied it? The world has done me naught but injury; society has been pitiless to me, and why should I concern myself with its opinions,—I, who have sought shelter with God, and depend upon him alone? But perhaps God frowns upon this love which lives on in my heart and consumes it. In that case, may he either tear it from my heart, or tear my heart from my body!"

But no sooner had the poor desperate creature pronounced these words than, casting her eyes upon the gown she wore, she was horrified at the thought of the blasphemy of which she had been guilty, so out of harmony was it with her saintly costume. With her thin white hand she wiped away the tears that glistened on her eyelids, and, raising her eyes to heaven, consecrated her life to everlasting suffering in a single look.

At that moment she heard a voice at her ear; it was the voice of the sister who kept the door of the convent.

"Madame," said she, "there is a woman in the parlor who wishes to be allowed to speak to you."

"Her name?"

"She refuses to tell it except to you."

"To what class in life does she seem to belong?99

"She seems a person of distinction."

"Still society, society!" murmured the abbess.

"What answer shall I give her?"

"That I await her coming."

"Where, madame?"

"Bring her hither; I will listen to her here in the garden, sitting upon this bench. I need the air; I stifle when I am indoors."

The portress withdrew, to reappear a moment later, followed by a woman whom it was easy to recognize as a woman of distinction by her garments, which were handsome, although of sombre hue.

She was rather below the average height; her rapid gait lacked something of nobility perhaps, but her presence exhaled an indescribable charm. She carried under her arm a little ivory casket, whose polished whiteness contrasted sharply with the black satin of her jet-trimmed dress.

"Madame," said the portress, "this is Madame la Supérieure."

The abbess lowered her veil, and turned toward the stranger, and as she saw that she kept her eyes turned upon the ground, and that she was deadly pale and trembling with emotion, she bestowed a kindly glance upon her, and said:—

"You expressed a wish to speak with me, and I am ready to listen to you, my sister."

"Madame," replied the stranger, "I have been so happy that in my pride I have thought that not even God himself could destroy my happiness. To-day God has breathed upon it, and I feel that I must weep and repent I have come to seek shelter here, so that my sobs may be stifled by the thick walls of your convent, and that my tears, which trace a furrow upon my cheeks, may not make me a laughing-stock to the world; so that God, who might seek me amid scenes of merry-making, would find me weeping in the sanctuary, and praying contritely at its altar."

"Your heart is deeply wounded, I can see, for I too know what it is to suffer," replied the young superior; "and in its agony the heart cannot clearly distinguish between what really is, and what it desires. If solitude, mortification of the flesh, and to do penance are what you need, my sister, come to us, and suffer with us; but if you seek a place where you can give vent freely to your grief and your despair, where no curious gaze will be fastened upon you, oh, madame! madame! fly from this place, and take refuge in your own room, where the world will see you much less than you will be seen here, and the hangings of your oratory will absorb the sound of your sobs much more effectively than the planks of our cells. And God, unless the enormity of your crimes has compelled him to turn his eyes away from you, will see you wherever you are."

The stranger raised her head, and gazed in profound amazement at the young abbess who talked in such an extraordinary strain.

"Why, madame," said she, "should not all who suffer seek the Lord's help; and is not your establishment a consecrated station upon the way to heaven?"

"There is but one path that leads to God, my sister," replied the nun, carried away by her despair. "What do you regret? For what do you weep? What do you desire? Society has turned a cold shoulder upon you, your friends are false to you, you lack money, or some transitory sorrow has made you a believer in everlasting misery; am I not right? You are suffering at this moment, and you fancy that you will suffer always thus, even as, when one sees an open wound, one fancies that it will never close. But you are mistaken; every wound that is not mortal will heal; so suffer on, and let your sorrow take its course; you will be cured, and then, if you are bound to us, suffering of another sort will begin; and that suffering will be in very truth unending, implacable, and past endurance. You will look out, through a barrier of brass, upon the world, to which you cannot return; then you will curse the day when the door of this holy hostelry, which you take for a station on the road to heaven, closed upon you. This that I say to you is not in strict accordance with our rules perhaps,—I have not been abbess long enough to know them thoroughly,—but 't is in strict accord with the feelings of my heart, and it is what I see every hour, not, in my own case, thank God! but all about me."

"Oh! no, no!" cried the stranger, "the world is at an end for me; I have lost everything that made the world attractive to me. No, madame, have no fear; I shall never regret it, never,—I am sure I shall never regret it!"

"Then the sorrow that afflicts you has a deeper source? Instead of an illusion have you lost a reality? Have you been separated forever from a husband, or child—or from a friend? Ah! then I pity you with all my heart, madame, for your heart is pierced from side to side and your wound is incurable. In that case, come to us, madame; the Lord will comfort you; he will replace the friends or kindred you may have lost with us, who form one large family, a flock of which he is the shepherd; and," added the abbess in a lower tone, "if he does not comfort you, which is quite possible, there will remain to you the last poor consolation of weeping with me, who came hither like yourself, in quest of comfort, but have not yet found it here."

"Alas!" cried the stranger, "was it such words as these that I hoped to hear? Is it thus that the unhappy are consoled?"

"Madame," said the superior, putting out her hand as if to ward off the rebuke, "do not speak of unhappiness before me; I know not who you may be, I know not what has happened to you, but you know nothing of unhappiness."

"Oh!" cried the stranger, in an agonized tone which made the superior shudder, "you do not know me, madame, for if you did know me, you would not speak so to me; besides, you cannot fairly judge my suffering, for to do that you must have suffered what I suffer; meanwhile, receive me, make me welcome, open the gates of God's house to me; and by my tears and cries and agony you will know if I am truly unhappy."

"Yes," said the superior, "I realize from your accent and from your words that you have lost the man you love, have you not?"

The stranger sobbed, and wrung her hands.

"Oh! yes, yes!" said she.

"Very well; since it is your desire, be one of our community; but first let me tell you what awaits you here, if your sufferings are equal to mine: two everlasting, pitiless walls, which, instead of turning our thoughts toward heaven, whither they should rise, constantly confine them to the earth, from which you will be separated; for while the blood flows, and the pulses beat, and the heart loves, none of the faculties are extinct; isolated as we are, and hidden from sight as we believe ourselves to be, the dead call to us from the depths of the tomb: 'Why do you leave the place where your dead are buried?'"

"Because all that I have loved in the world is here," replied the stranger, in a choking voice, throwing herself at the feet of the superior, who gazed at her in profound astonishment. "Now you have my secret, my sister; now you can understand my grief, my mother. I implore you on my knees—you see my tears—to accept the sacrifice I make to God, or rather to grant the favor I ask at your hands. He is buried in the church of Peyssac; let me weep upon his tomb, which is here."

"What tomb? Of whom are you speaking? What do you mean?" cried the superior, drawing back from the kneeling woman, at whom she gazed with something very like terror.

"When I was happy," continued the penitent, in a voice so low that it was drowned by the sighing of the wind among the branches, "when I was happy—and I have been very happy—I was called Nanon de Lartigues. Do you recognize me now, and do you know what it is that I implore?"

The superior sprang to her feet as if released by a spring, and stood for a moment, motionless and pale, with uplifted eyes and clasped hands.

"Oh, madame!" she said at last in a voice which she struggled to render calm, but which trembled with emotion, "oh, madame, is it true that you, who come here to weep beside a tomb, have no knowledge who I am? You do not know that I have purchased with my freedom, with my happiness in this world, and with all the tears of my heart the melancholy pleasure of which you now claim an equal portion. You are Nanon de Lartigues; I, when I had a name, was the Vicomtesse de Cambes."

Nanon, with a sharp cry, walked up to the superior, and, raising the hood which shaded the nun's dull eyes, recognized her rival.

"'T is she!" murmured Nanon. "And she was so lovely when she came to Saint-Georges! Poor woman!"

She stepped back, with her eyes still fixed on the viscountess, and shaking her head.

"Oh!" cried the viscountess with a touch of the pride that all men feel to know that their capacity for suffering is greater than their fellows'; "it is kind of you to say that, and it has done me good. I must have suffered cruelly to have undergone so cruel a change; I must have wept bitterly; I am more unhappy than you, therefore, for you are lovely still."

And the viscountess raised her eyes, beaming with the first ray of joy that had shone in them for a month past, as if seeking Canolles in the sky above her head.

Nanon, still on her knees, hid her face in her hands and burst into tears.

"Alas! madame," said she, "I did not know to whom my petition was addressed; for the last month I have known nothing of what was taking place, and that ignorance has preserved my beauty; beyond all question I have been mad. Now I am at your command. I have no desire to make you jealous of the dead. I ask to be admitted here as the humblest of your nuns; you can do with me as you please, and if I disobey you can subject me to the severest discipline,—you have the dungeon and the impace. But," she added in a trembling voice, "you will at least let me from time to time see the place where the man we both loved so dearly is buried?"

She fell, sobbing and almost unconscious, upon the turf.

The viscountess made no reply; leaning against the trunk of a sycamore, she seemed ready to expire at her side.

"Oh! madame," cried Nanon, "you do not answer; you refuse! Be it so; I have a single treasure in my possession, and you perhaps have nothing that was his; grant my request and that treasure is yours."

As she spoke she took from her breast a large locket which was attached to a gold chain about her neck, and, offered it to Madame de Cambes, holding it open in her hand.

Claire pounced upon the relic, and kissed the cold, life-less hair with such vehemence that it seemed as if her heart came to her lips to share the kiss.

"Do you think," said Nanon, still kneeling at her feet, "that you have ever suffered more than I suffer at this moment?"

"Ah! you carry the day, madame," said Claire, lifting her up and taking her to her arms; "come, come, my sister, for I love you better than all the world for having shared this treasure with me."

She leaned over Nanon, as she gently raised her, and lightly kissed her cheek who had been her rival.

"Yes, you shall be my sister and my dearest friend," said she; "yes, we will live and die together, talking of him and praying for him. He sleeps near by in our church; it was the only favor I could obtain from her to whom I devoted my life. May God forgive her!"

With that, Claire took Nanon's hand, and side by side, stepping so lightly that they scarcely bent the blades of grass beneath their feet, they walked to the clump of yew-trees behind which the church was hidden.

The viscountess led Nanon to a chapel, in the centre of which a simple stone stood up some four inches above the ground; a cross was carved upon the stone.

The viscountess pointed to it without speaking.

Nanon knelt and kissed the cold marble. Claire leaned against the altar, kissing the lock of hair. The one was trying to accustom herself to the thought of death, the other to dream for the last time of life.

A quarter of an hour after, the two women returned together to the house. Except to pray, they had not for an instant broken their woebegone silence.

"Madame," said the viscountess, "from this hour you have your cell in this convent; would you like the one adjoining mine?—we shall be separated less."

"I thank you very humbly, madame," said Nanon, "for the offer, and I gratefully accept it. But before I leave the world forever let me say farewell for the last time to my brother, who is waiting at the gate; he also is overcome with sorrow."

"Alas!" said Claire, to whose mind the thought came instinctively that Cauvignac's safety caused the death of his companion in captivity; "go, my sister."

Nanon left the room.