"A hundred /louis!/" cried Zephirine; "will that save him?"Without waiting for her sister-in-law's reply, the old maid ran her hands through the placket-holes of her gown, unfastened the petticoat beneath it, which gave forth a heavy sound as it dropped to the floor.
She knew so well the places where she had sewn in her /louis/ that she now ripped them out with the rapidity of magic. The gold pieces rang as they fell, one by one, into her lap. The old Pen-Hoel gazed at this performance in stupefied amazement.
"But they'll see you!" she whispered in her friend's ear.
"Thirty-seven," answered Zephirine, continuing to count.
"Every one will know how much you have."
"Forty-two."
"Double /louis!/ all new! How did you get them, you who can't see clearly?""I felt them. Here's one hundred and four /louis/," cried Zephirine.
"Is that enough?"
"What is all this?" asked the Chevalier du Halga, who now came in, unable to understand the attitude of his old blind friend, holding out her petticoat which was full of gold coins.
Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel explained.
"I knew it," said the chevalier, "and I have come to bring a hundred and forty /louis/ which I have been holding at Calyste's disposition, as he knows very well."The chevalier drew the /rouleaux/ from his pocket and showed them.
Mariotte, seeing such wealth, sent Gasselin to lock the doors.
"Gold will not give him health," said the baroness, weeping.
"But it can take him to Paris, where he can find her. Come, Calyste.""Yes," cried Calyste, springing up, "I will go.""He will live," said the baron, in a shaking voice; "and I can die--send for the rector!"
The words cast terror on all present. Calyste, seeing the mortal paleness on his father's face, for the old man was exhausted by the cruel emotions of the scene, came to his father's side. The rector, after hearing the report of the doctors, had gone to Mademoiselle des Touches, intending to bring her back with him to Calyste, for in proportion as the worthy man had formerly detested her, he now admired her, and protected her as a shepherd protects the most precious of his flock.
When the news of the baron's approaching end became known in Guerande, a crowd gathered in the street and lane; the peasants, the /paludiers/, and the servants knelt in the court-yard while the rector administered the last sacraments to the old Breton warrior. The whole town was agitated by the news that the father was dying beside his half-dying son. The probable extinction of this old Breton race was felt to be a public calamity.
The solemn ceremony affected Calyste deeply. His filial sorrow silenced for a moment the anguish of his love. During the last hour of the glorious old defender of the monarchy, he knelt beside him, watching the coming on of death. The old man died in his chair in presence of the assembled family.
"I die faithful to God and his religion," he said. "My God! as the reward of my efforts grant that Calyste may live!""I shall live, father; and I will obey you," said the young man.
"If you wish to make my death as happy as Fanny has made my life, swear to me to marry.""I promise it, father."
It was a touching sight to see Calyste, or rather his shadow, leaning on the arm of the old Chevalier du Halga--a spectre leading a shade--and following the baron's coffin as chief mourner. The church and the little square were crowded with the country people coming in to the funeral from a circuit of thirty miles.
But the baroness and Zephirine soon saw that, in spite of his intention to obey his father's wishes, Calyste was falling back into a condition of fatal stupor. On the day when the family put on their mourning, the baroness took her son to a bench in the garden and questioned him closely. Calyste answered gently and submissively, but his answers only proved to her the despair of his soul.
"Mother," he said, "there is no life in me. What I eat does not feed me; the air that enters my lungs does not refresh me; the sun feels cold; it seems to you to light that front of the house, and show you the old carvings bathed in its beams, but to me it is all a blur, a mist. If Beatrix were here, it would be dazzling. There is but one only thing left in this world that keeps its shape and color to my eyes,--this flower, this foliage," he added, drawing from his breast the withered bunch the marquise had given him at Croisic.
The baroness dared not say more. Her son's answer seemed to her more indicative of madness than his silence of grief. She saw no hope, no light in the darkness that surrounded them.
The baron's last hours and death had prevented the rector from bringing Mademoiselle des Touches to Calyste, as he seemed bent on doing, for reasons which he did not reveal. But on this day, while mother and son still sat on the garden bench, Calyste quivered all over on perceiving Felicite through the opposite windows of the court-yard and garden. She reminded him of Beatrix, and his life revived. It was therefore to Camille that the poor stricken mother owed the first motion of joy that lightened her mourning.
"Well, Calyste," said Mademoiselle des Touches, when they met, "I want you to go to Paris with me. We will find Beatrix," she added in a low voice.
The pale, thin face of the youth flushed red, and a smile brightened his features.
"Let us go," he said.
"We shall save him," said Mademoiselle des Touches to the mother, who pressed her hands and wept for joy.
A week after the baron's funeral, Mademoiselle des Touches, the Baronne du Guenic and Calyste started for Paris, leaving the household in charge of old Zephirine.
