CHAPTER CVI.
THE OLD MAN FALLS ASLEEP.
That morning the prisoner of the Bastille awoke and felt for the ring, which was like a promise of immortality to him. It was gone. He started up in wild amaze, refusing to believe the evidence of his own senses. He shook his garments, removed them one by one, examining every fold. He threaded the thick silver of his beard with both trembling hands, and interrogated the keen-eyed mouse, which stood looking at him with almost human intelligence from a corner of the cell, where it had fled on being ejected from the bosom of its old friend.
It was gone. When the old man was sure of this he went wild in his passionate despair, and rushed out among the bleak ruins, calling on God to take vengeance on the wretch who had despoiled him.
His cries brought no echo of sympathy from any human voice: for even then the ruins of the Bastille were like the heaped up lava of a burnt district. Across the moat a few workmen were busy striking the tents, and taking down the blackened lamps which had been stars of flame the night before; but they only paused long enough to laugh at the old man’s wild gestures, and went off to another part of the grounds.
Then the poor prisoner, half demented by his loss, began the most patient search that ever absorbed a human life. Day after day, hour after hour, he wandered over those ruins, peering behind the stones, fathoming crevices, searching the clefts of each broken wall, and questioning every person he met, if anything strange had been seen, but in all cases, refusing with meek cunning, to disclose the thing he searched for.
Thus for weeks and months the old man spent half his time in the ruins searching, searching, searching for the ring, which never came back to him. And so he grew weaker and weaker as hope died out in him; sometimes sitting whole days in the solitude of his cell, but always with his eyes roving over the floor and walls, as if he still expected them to give up his treasure.
When her father did not come as usual to the house, which seldom happened now, Marguerite always sought him in his cell, with a basket on her arm, and fed him with bread soaked in wine, or gave him delicate meats cooked by her own hand; for she saw that the old prisoner did not care for anything, and shrunk more and more into his hiding-place, as if he longed to evade everything but herself and his little dungeon companion.
One day, when she came upon her gentle mission, the old man looked earnestly in her face a long time, then he shook his head with a sad, wavering movement, and dropped his eyes.
“Change, change—everywhere change,” he murmured. “The same face, yet not the same. What is it that fills her with such holy light. Tell me little one, what it means?”
“It means,” answered Marguerite, with the rich quietness of supreme content, “that I am beloved—that I love.”
“Beloved? Love? Ah! I heard of such things once. Then, I think, some one loved me; but that was a long, long time ago.”
“But you are still loved,” said Marguerite, laying her hand on his.
“I should be, if I could find _that_!” answered the old man; “but it is too late, I am feeble, and cannot search further—very, very feeble!”
“Take more of the wine,” pleaded Marguerite. “If you would only go home with me.”
“No, no; this is my home. I need no other.”
Marguerite pressed the shadowy hand clasped in hers.
“But some day, when I have a home of my own, you will bring little marmousette and live with me.”
“A home of your own?” questioned the old man. “When will you have that?”
“When France is quiet again. It is a sweet, sweet secret, which you shall know when you care to listen, father.”
“Ah, if I could find _that_, you should be very happy, Therese.”
“But I am happy, wonderfully happy, father. You understand when a girl is loved, the wealth of the whole world is hers.”
The old man shook his head; he was very weak and even this sweet talk wearied him. Marguerite saw it and her heart thrilled with apprehension.
“Oh come with me, father,” she pleaded. “I cannot bear to see you sleeping on these damp stones while I have a bed. Come, and you shall know once more what love is.”
“Not now. I like the stones; a bed makes me ache in all my limbs. Besides, my little friend likes no place as well as this.”
“Poor little marmousette, it must be a small place which cannot make room for him,” said Marguerite. “I will make him a nest among my flowers. And you, my father, oh what can I do that will make you happy?”
“_That_ would make me happy, if you could only find it.”
“Alas, I cannot. Where could I search?”
“It is here. It will be found by some poor stranger, and work more mischief; but I cannot help it; day and night I have searched among these stones.”
“You have worn yourself out, my father.”
“Yes, I think so,” answered the old man, faintly.
“I cannot leave you here alone.”
“Alone! He is here; he never leaves me.”
“But you will come with me?”
“Oh, yes! when I am stronger.”
The old man’s face drooped on his breast after this, and he seemed to sleep.
Marguerite arose to go.
“Adieu,” she said. “You are weary, and I keep you from rest.”
“From rest? No one can do that,” said the old man, gently. “Adieu!”
Marguerite bowed her head; her father lifted his hands and blessed her as she bent before him.
There was something mournful and pathetic in his gestures, which filled her heart with sad forebodings.
The night was dark and cloudy. It was dangerous to be out so late; yet Marguerite lingered near the cell reluctant to leave the old man alone. Twice she went back and listened. All was silent, and, at last she moved homeward through the ruins.
As Marguerite reached the draw-bridge, the shadow of a man fell across it. Her heart leaped.
“Is it you St. Just? Is it you? Ah, I never needed you so much.”
“No Marguerite, it is only Jacques. Do not be hurt because it is not that other. He is not always near to watch you as I am.”
Jacques spoke with humility. In all his bitter trouble he had never once swerved from the most perfect kindness to the girl who scarcely thought that he suffered.
“I thought that you did not care to watch me now, monsieur Jacques,” she said. “You never come to see us.”
There was pain, subdued with infinite patience, in Jacques’ eyes as he answered this light reproach. Did the girl know how much it had cost him to keep away from her? Had she absolutely forgotten her promise—forgotten that he loved her?
“Marguerite,” he said, with mournful firmness, “you remember a promise made that day before the Bastille was taken?”
Marguerite uttered a faint cry and recoiled backwards as if the man had aimed a blow at her.
“No, no! I have not forgotten; but I thought—oh, Monsieur Jacques, forgive me!”
The girl held out her hands to him now, and the anguish of a new enlightenment thrilled her voice.
Jacques took her hands in his and clasped them firmly. With the struggle of a giant he held down the bitter agony in his heart.
“Such words are not for you, Marguerite. Instead of forgiveness, I give you blessings. I am ready to serve you—die for you. But forgiveness we must not talk of that. There is nothing to forgive between you and me.”
“Is a broken promise nothing—for mine is broken. I hardly made a struggle to keep it; yet you gave liberty to my poor father. Is selfish forgetfulness nothing? Am I worthy that you forgive me without asking?” cried Marguerite, stung with keen self-reproach.
“Hush, Marguerite, hush! I cannot listen when you revile yourself. It was not for this I spoke; but I feared you might remember that promise and be troubled by it. Now you will understand that it is forgotten, utterly forgotten.”
A heavy sigh broke from the strong man as these words left his lips, and his limbs shook as if the soul had been wrenched from his body.
“Ah, Monsieur Jacques, can such things be forgotten?”
Jacques knew that she was thinking of St. Just, and wondering in her heart if _he_ ever could forget. The idea was but one pang more, still it wounded him to the soul.
Marguerite took consolation from her own absorbing love. “If he cared for me in that way,” she thought, “to forget would be impossible. It is because I was so helpless and so miserable. One gets over pity, but love, oh, never—never. That would be death with no Heaven afterward.”
With that man standing before her, so brave, so noble in his self-abnegation, the girl could reason thus, and turn her thoughts on the being of her own worship.
Perhaps Jacques felt something of this, for his voice shook when he addressed her again.
“I would still have cared for your safety, and followed you in silence, Marguerite. But the streets are full of dangerous people to-night, and you staid so late I feared that you might need help.”
These words turned Marguerite’s thoughts back to her father.
“Monsieur Jacques, oh! my friend, I do, I do. My poor father is ill. I can keep his secret no longer. Come with me—together we may persuade him to leave this place.”
Marguerite turned to lead the way back to her father’s cell. Jacques followed her in silence. The clouds broke and poured watery gleams of moonlight into that prison cell, as these two persons approached it. By this fitful radiance they saw the old man sleeping tranquilly on the stone floor—so tranquilly that their own hearts stopped beating.
Monsieur Jacques bent over him.
“Does he sleep,” said Marguerite, in a low voice, for her heart was chilled within her. “Does he sleep?”
“So sweetly that the angels of Heaven alone can wake him,” was the solemn reply.