第44章 THE MAN AT THE DOOR.(3)

She sighed with infinite content,and blessed him in a feeble whisper.'And if you live,'she went on,'you will rebuild the old house,Gaston.The walls are sound yet.And the oak in the hall was not burned.There is a chest of linen at Gil's,and a chest with your father's gold lace--but that is pledged,'she added dreamily.'I forgot.'

'Madame,'I answered solemnly,'it shall be done--it shall be done as you wish,if the power lie with me.'

She lay for some time after that murmuring prayers,her head supported on my shoulder.I longed impatiently for the nurse to return,that I might despatch her for the leech;not that Ithought anything could be done,but for my own comfort and greater satisfaction afterwards,and that my mother might not die without some fitting attendance.The house remained quiet,however,with that impressive quietness which sobers the heart at such times,and I could not do this.And about six o'clock my mother opened her eyes again.

'This is not Marsac,'she murmured abruptly,her eyes roving from the ceiling to the wall at the foot of the bed.

No,Madame,'I answered,leaning over her,'you are in Blois.

But I am here--Gaston,your son.'

She looked at me,a faint smile of pleasure stealing over her pinched face.'Twelve thousand livres a year,'she whispered,rather to herself than to me,'and an establishment,reduced a little,yet creditable,very creditable.'For a moment she seemed to be dying in my arms,but again opened her eyes quickly and looked me in the face.'Gaston?'she said,suddenly and strangely.'Who said Gaston?He is with the King--I have blessed him;and his days shall be long in the land!'Then,raising herself in my arms with a last effort of strength,she cried loudly,'Way there!Way for my son,the Sieur de Marsac!'

They were her last words.When I laid her down on the bed a moment later,she was dead,and I was alone.

Madame de Bonne,my mother,was seventy at the time of her death,having survived my father eighteen years.She was Marie de Loche de Loheac,third daughter of Raoul,Sieur de Loheac,on the Vilaine,and by her great-grandmother,a daughter of Jean de Laval,was descended from the ducal family of Rohan,a relationship which in after-times,and under greatly altered circumstances,Henry Duke of Rohan condescended to acknowledge,honouring me with his friendship on more occasions than one.Her death,which I have here recorded,took place on the fourth of January,the Queen-Mother of France,Catherine de Medicis,dying a little after noon on the following day.

In Blois,as in every other town,even Paris itself,the Huguenots possessed at this time a powerful organisation;and with the aid of the surgeon,who showed me much respect in my bereavement,and exercised in my behalf all the influence which skilful and honest;men of his craft invariably possess,I was able to arrange for my mother's burial in a private ground about a league beyond the walls and near the village of Chaverny.At the time of her death I had only thirty crowns in gold remaining,Simon Fleix,to whose fate I could obtain no clue,having carried off thirty-five with the horses.The whole of this residue,however,with the exception of a handsome gratuity to the nurse and a trifle spent on my clothes,I expended on the funeral,desiring that no stain should rest on my mother's birth or my affection.Accordingly,though the ceremony was of necessity private,and indeed secret,and the mourners were few,it lacked nothing,I think,of the decency and propriety which my mother loved;and which she preferred,I have often heard her say,to the vulgar show that is equally at the command of the noble and the farmer of taxes.

Until she was laid in her quiet resting-place I stood in constant fear of some interruption on the part either of Bruhl,whose connection with Fresnoy and the abduction I did not doubt,or of the Jacobin monk.But none came;and nothing happening to enlighten me as to the fate of Mademoiselle de la Vire,I saw my duty clear before me.I disposed of the furniture of my mother's room,and indeed of everything which was saleable,and raised in this way enough money to buy myself a new cloak--without which Icould not travel in the wintry weather--and to hire a horse.

Sorry as the animal was,the dealer required security,and I had none to offer.It was only at the last moment,I bethought me of the fragment of gold chain which mademoiselle had left behind her,and which,as well as my mother's rings and vinaigrette,Ihad kept back from the sale.This I was forced to lodge with him.Having thus,with some pain and more humiliation,provided means for the journey,I lost not an hour in beginning it.On the eighth of January I set oat for Rosny,to carry the news of my ill-success and of mademoiselle's position whither I had looked a week before to carry herself.