Page:Peterson Magazine 1869B.pdf/59

64 MARIE ANTOINETTE'S TALISMAN.

The woman gave a deep gasp, flung out her arms, and fell to the floor insensible- the whitest living thing that joy ever prostrated.

"Oh! it has killed her! What can I do ? What can I do ?" cried the poor girl, appealing piteously to Jaque.

"Give her air ! Give her water ! We broke up the pain of her suspense too suddenly," answered Jaque, lifting the lady in his arms, and laying her on the bed. "She was strong to battle against sorrow, but this good news has almost taken her life."

Marguerite flung open the windows, and brought a cup of water, with which Jaque bathed that white face; but it was very long before a faint breath proclaimed that the locked heart had commenced to beat again.

Mamma! Mamma ! Can you hear me?"

The woman turned her great eyes wistfully upon that eager face.

Let me tell you slowly, mamma. Do not try to take it in all at once, but word by word."

All at once Madame Gosner sat upright, but she seemed like a person coming out of a dream. { She swept the hair back from her temples, threading it through her fingers, whispering,

"There is white in it. He would not know me."

Then she turned slowly toward Marguerite, and questioned her. "You were saying something about him? -or is it that I have dreamed?"

She said this mournfully and in doubt, not yet having come out of her bewilderment ; but as her heavy eyes were uplifted to the girl's face, they kindled under the glow of happiness which met them in every beautiful feature.

Is it true? Did they give us hope?"

"Mamma, I have an order for his release."

"No! Tell it me again. I do not believe it of course, I do not believe it, such words have mocked me so often ; but you look as if it might Le-and this man. Ah ! it is Monsieur Jaque; tell me, monsieur, and I will believe you. Is there really a hope?"

"Dear lady, have a little patience, try and compose yourself: Tomorrow your husband will be here!"

"And you say this? Tomorrow! Oh, mother of God! how I have prayed, worked, suffered, and now my heart refuses to receive this great joy. It is so used to sorrow- oh, my friend! it so used to sorrow."

"But a brighter day is coming," said Monsieur Jaque.

"I cannot believe it. God help me, I cannot believe it."

and, all at once, burst into a storm of tears. Thus she sat rocking to and fro, while the ice in her heart broke up and let the sunshine of a mighty joy shine in. When she lifted her face again it was wet, but radiant. Marguerite threw herself upon her knees before the transfigured woman.

“You are beginning to believe, I see it in your face, I can feel it in the heaving of your bosom, in the trembling of your hands. Mamma, mamma! it is true."

"I know; but tomorrow seems so far off. Could we not go at once? After so many years they might cut off an hour or two."

She appealed to Monsieur Jaque, who shook his head.

"I should feel sure then?" she said, piteously.

"Be sure, as it is; no one would deceive you.”

"He might- I mean the king."

"Not so. Louis is a kind man, lacking somewhat in the courage to act; but there is neither treachery or falsehood in him."

Madame Gosner drew a deep breath, and a look of forced resignation came to her face.

"It seems but a little time," she said, "and I have waited so long; but these few hours seem harder to bear than all the lost years."

"But they will soon pass."

"Yes ; and he will be here. You have seen him, monsieur? Tell me, has imprisonment made him old as sorrow has left me?"

"It was an old man that I saw in the dungeon."

"Yet my husband should have been in the prime of life; and I, when he went away, monsieur, I was not much older than Marguerite, and so like her."

Monsieur Jaque glanced at the lined and anxious face of the middle-aged woman, from which perpetual grief had swept away all the bloom, and hardened the beauty into a sad expression of endurance. Then his eyes turned upon Marguerite, more lovely a thousand times than be had ever seen her before ; for the happiness of success had left bloom upon her cheeks, and lay like sunshine in the violet softness of her eyes. The contrast struck him painfully. Was grief then so much more powerful than time ? How many women in France even then suffered as she had done ? Was this to be a universal result? Would oppression in the end destroy all the sweets of womanhood, by forcing a sex, naturally kind and gentle, into resistance wilder and fiercer, because more unreasoning, than men ever waged on each other?

These thoughts disturbed the man. In admitting the unnatural influence of women into their