“Lucy, take my love. One day share my life.
Be my dearest, first on earth.”
We walked back to the Rue Fossette by moonlight—such
moonlight as fell on Eden—shining through
the shades of the Great Garden, and haply gilding
a path glorious for a step divine—a Presence
nameless. Once in their lives some men and women
go back to these first fresh days of our great Sire
and Mother—taste that grand morning’s
dew— bathe in its sunrise.
In the course of the walk I was told how Justine Marie
Sauveur had always been regarded with the affection
proper to a daughter—how, with M. Paul’s
consent, she had been affianced for months to one
Heinrich Muehler, a wealthy young German merchant,
and was to be married in the course of a year.
Some of M. Emanuel’s relations and connections
would, indeed, it seems, have liked him to marry her,
with a view to securing her fortune in the family;
but to himself the scheme was repugnant, and the idea
totally inadmissible.
We reached Madame Beck’s door. Jean Baptiste’s
clock tolled nine. At this hour, in this house,
eighteen months since, had this man at my side bent
before me, looked into my face and eyes, and arbitered
my destiny. This very evening he had again stooped,
gazed, and decreed. How different the look—how
far otherwise the fate!
He deemed me born under his star: he seemed to
have spread over me its beam like a banner. Once—unknown,
and unloved, I held him harsh and strange; the low
stature, the wiry make, the angles, the darkness, the
manner, displeased me. Now, penetrated with his
influence, and living by his affection, having his
worth by intellect, and his goodness by heart—I
preferred him before all humanity.
We parted: he gave me his pledge, and then his
farewell. We parted: the next day—he
sailed.
FINIS.
Man cannot prophesy. Love is no oracle.
Fear sometimes imagines a vain thing. Those years
of absence! How had I sickened over their anticipation!
The woe they must bring seemed certain as death.
I knew the nature of their course: I never had
doubt how it would harrow as it went. The juggernaut
on his car towered there a grim load. Seeing
him draw nigh, burying his broad wheels in the oppressed
soil—I, the prostrate votary—felt
beforehand the annihilating craunch.
Strange to say—strange, yet true, and owning
many parallels in life’s experience—that
anticipatory craunch proved all—yes—nearly
all the torture. The great Juggernaut,
in his great chariot, drew on lofty, loud, and sullen.
He passed quietly, like a shadow sweeping the sky,
at noon. Nothing but a chilling dimness was seen
or felt. I looked up. Chariot and demon
charioteer were gone by; the votary still lived.
