Page:Peterson Magazine 1869B.pdf/197

196 DEATH IN LIFE.

She could see nothing but that luminous cross—think of nothing but of the heaven that had pitied her, and sent her help.

The hours passed on, and still she knelt there, half leaning for support against the rough wall. Still her lips moved in passionate prayer, and her eyes never wandered from the faintly-shining cross.

Daylight found her there; and at last, when the hour of her release came, and Elise's voice sounded in trembling accents at her door, she rose and tottered out into the chapel, pale as death, with sunken eyes, and loose, falling hair, and garments dampened by the vapors of the vaults.

Yet the spirit of the Berangers still burned in those hollow eyes ; and when Duroc met her in the chapel with his usual obsequious bow, she said calmly, "You have kept good watch, monsieur, I am sure. Your employer has reason to be satisfied with you," and passed on with a steady step.

The day passed away in dutiful attendance upon her mother, who attributed Vivienne's pallor and weakness to her extreme grief for her husband's death, and said all she could to soothe and console her. When night drew on, and Vivienne prepared to leave her, Madame de Beranger entreated her to stay, but it was easy to excuse her absence to so gentle and yielding a person.

Vivienne took her hand, and said gently, " I am sure, dear mother, you will excuse me when I tell you that I leave you now-that I must always leave you at this hour-in order to obey a request of my husband's. He has left me something to do, which occupies me now. "

"Go, my dear child, " said her mother; "the requests of the dead are sacred. I would not keep you."

Another night of horror, of unspeakable ngony, alternating with wild ecstasies of prayer. But on the third night exhausted nature could endure no more. When Vivienne sought her gloomy cell, faint and trembling, she lay down upon the couch which Elise's care had made soft and warm. The lamp placed in a niche, which sheltered it from the sighing wind, shone steadily and calmly on the silver crucifix, and Vivienne's eyes fixed themselves on the holy symbol. Then in a moment her weary eyelids closed, and she sank into a slumber as profound and tranquil as an infant's. All through the long, dark night she slept till Elise roused her by her hurried, frightened calling at the door, and Vivienne, as she unbarred it, welcomed her with a smile, and said, with a little glow on her cheek, "I have had such sweet dreams, Elise. Would you believe that one could sleep well and dream sweet dreams here?"

Elise gazed upon her mistress with eyes of mingled love and awe as she answered warmly, " Yes, madame, those whom the saints love, and the angels guard, may have fair dreams and peaceful slumbers even here."

The faint smile lingered on Vivienne's lips, and her eyes held a tender, happy light in their depths, for she had been dreaming of Leon—and it was no longer a crime to think of aim.

Many different rumors concerning the death of the Marquis de Hautlieu, and the strange life the young marquise was leading, had reached the gay and careless court, and had even wandered to the camp far away.

Some averred that Vivienne was mad, others that she intended to convert the chateau into a convent; some that she was doing penance for a terrible, mysterious crime; and others dimly conjectured the true reason, and believed that she was condemned to this death in life by her stern husband's will. The new Marquis de Hautlieu, when questioned about his fair cousin, answered by careless shrugs of his shoulders, and laughing hints, which reflected anything but honor upon the character of the young marquise. But the words and looks of as unprincipled a man as Philip de Hautlieu, made but little impression upon those who remembered the spotless purity and modesty of Vivienne's life at court ; and more than once he found himself angrily and haughtily reproved for his malicious insinuations by some young cavalier who had admired the " Child Marquise," but had never dared to tell her so.

Vivienne, however, was ignorant of all this. Day after day she spent by her mother's bedside; night after night was passed in the drear solitude of her tomb-like cell, which was no longer full of horrors too great to be borne, but had become a holy, solemn retreat, where she spent long hours in prayer, and in rapt ecstatic, trance-like visions of the glories of the blest. It mattered little to her that her body grew feeble and emaciated; that the clinging vapors in her cell banished the bloom from her cheek, and the light from her eyes; that she seemed hurrying to the grave while yet in the early dawn of womanhood. She had done with the joys of earth, she thought, and heaven was close before her. She only asked that she might live to soothe her mother's dying moments, and then in the holy peace of a convent she prayed that her life might be ended. When she was dead-when Leon, in the distant camp,