You see, my dear Edgar, that I make you share all of my torments, all of my gloomy reflections.  I make you live over this hour, minute by minute, agony on agony, as I suffered it myself.

I stood aside under a tree, waiting I know not for what; one of the men in black, I had seen from the window, came down the steps of the terrace and advanced towards me.  I made some confused remark; the situation supplied it with intelligence.

“You are a relation, a friend, an acquaintance?” he said, inquiringly.

“Yes, monsieur.”

“It is a terrible misfortune,” he added, clasping his hands and bowing his head; “or rather say two terrible misfortunes in one day; the poor woman is also dead.” ...

Like one in a dream I heard the latter remark, and I now transcribe it to you as my impression of something that occurred long, long ago, although I know it took place yesterday.

“Yes, dead,” he went on to say; “we were called in too late.  Bleeding would have relieved the brain.  It was a violent congestion; we have similar cases during our practice.  An immense loss to the community.  A woman who was young, beautiful as an angel, and charity itself....  Dead!”

He looked up, raised his hand to heaven, and walked rapidly away.

I am haunted by a memory that nothing can dispel.  This spectre doubtless follows you too, dear Edgar.  It is a mute, eloquent image fashioned in the empty air, like the outline of a grave; a phantom that the sun drives not away, pursuing me by day and by night.  It is Raymond’s face as he stood opposite to you on the field of death, his brow, his eye, his lips, his whole bearing breathing the noblest sentiments that were ever buried in an undeserved grave.  This heroic young man met us with the fatal conviction that his last hour had come; he felt towards us neither hatred nor contempt; he obeyed the inexorable exigencies of the hour, without accusation, without complaint.

The silence of Raymond clothed in sublime delicacy his friendship for us, and his love for her.  His manner expressed neither the resignation that calls for pity nor the pride that provokes passion; his countenance shone with modest serenity, the offspring of a grand resolve.

In a few days of conjugal bliss he had wandered through the flowery paths of human felicity; he had exhausted the measure of divine beatitude allotted to man on earth, and he stood nerved for the inevitable and bloody expiation of his happiness.

All this was written on Raymond’s face.

Edgar!  Edgar! we were too relentless.  Why should honor, the noblest of our virtues, be the parent of so much remorse?

Adieu.

ROGER DE MONBERT.

XLI.

EDGAR DE MEILHAN to the PRINCE DE MONBERT,
St. Dominique Street, Paris (France).