Part 21 (1/2)
After their arrest Philip and Dolores were taken to the nearest station-house and ushered into a room where three persons, arrested like themselves during the evening, were awaiting examination. Unfortunately the official charged with conducting these investigations had already gone home. As he would not return until the next morning, the sergeant of police decided that the prisoners must pa.s.s the night there. Some mattresses were spread upon the floor for those who chose to use them.
Dolores refused to lie down. She seated herself in a broken-down arm chair which Philip obtained for her, not without considerable difficulty, and declared that she would spend the night there. Philip placed himself on a stool at her feet and thus they waited the break of day.
Their companions were stretched upon their couches fast asleep, and the night, which promised to be heavy with cruel wakefulness and fatigue, pa.s.sed like some delightful dream.
They could not close their eyes to the fate that was in store for them.
Philip had plotted to save the queen; he had returned from his refuge in foreign lands solely for this purpose. By sheltering him, Dolores had become his accomplice. Such crimes would meet with, no indulgence. In the morning they would be interrogated by an official, whose mind had been poisoned against them in advance, and who would show no mercy to their youth. Accused of desiring the overthrow of the Republic and the return of the Bourbons, they would be sent to prison, taken from their cells to the Revolutionary Tribunal, and condemned to the guillotine.
Such was the summary mode of procedure during the Reign of Terror. To hope that any exception would be made in their case was folly. All that was left for them, therefore, was to prepare to die. If the prospect of such a fate brought the tears to their eyes at first, it was not because either of them was wanting in courage. No, it was only for the fate that was to befall the other that each wept. But when they had talked together, and learned that they were mutually resigned, their sorrow was appeased; and as if their sentence had already been p.r.o.nounced, they thought only of making their last hours on earth pa.s.s as calmly and sweetly as possible.
”Why should I fear to die?” said Dolores, when Philip tried to encourage her by hopes in which he himself had not the slightest confidence.
”Death has terrors only for those who leave some loved one behind them; but when I am gone, who will be left to mourn for me? Antoinette? Have I not for a long time been the same as dead to her? I can leave the world without creating a void in any heart, without causing any one a pang.
Hence I can, without regret, go to seek the eternal rest for which I have sighed so long.”
”Have you truly longed for death?” asked Philip.
”I have seen so many loved ones fall around me,” replied Dolores, ”my eyes have witnessed so many sorrows, I have suffered so much, and my life since my happy childhood has been so unspeakably lonely and sad that I have often and often entreated G.o.d to recall me to Himself.”
”But, Dolores, if you had only listened to me when I pleaded in vain, if you had but placed your hand in mine, what misery we should have been spared.”
”It would not have averted our misfortunes.”
”No; but we might have borne them together, and after our sorrows found consolation in each other.”
”I could not be your wife.”
”Is it true, then, that you do not love me?”
Dolores made no answer. Emboldened by the solemn calmness of these moments which were, as they supposed, ushering them into eternity, Philip continued:
”Whenever I pressed my suit, you pleaded my father's wishes as an excuse for not listening to my prayers. To gratify a foolish ambition he desired me to marry Antoinette. Ah, well! my father's will no longer stands between us; and the engagement that binds me to her is broken by the changed situation in which we find ourselves. We are free now in the shadow of death. Will you not tell me the truth? Will you not open your heart to me as I have opened mine to you?”
Dolores listened, her glowing eyes riveted upon Philip's face, her bosom heaving with emotion. The words; ”We are free now in the shadow of death,” rang in her ears. She felt that she could not refuse her lover the last joy and consolation that he claimed; and that she, whose past had been one long sacrifice of her happiness and of her hopes, had a right to reveal the secret so long buried in her soul. Gently, almost solemnly, these words fell from her lips:
”Listen, Philip, since you ask me for the truth, now, at this supreme hour, I have always loved you as I love you now; and I love you now as ardently as I am beloved!”
There was so much tenderness in her manner that Philip sprang up, his eyes sparkling with rapture.
”And this is the avowal you have refused to make for five long years!”
he cried. ”I knew that my love was returned. You have confessed it; and if I were compelled to give my life in exchange for the happiness of hearing this from your lips, I should not think that I paid too dearly for it. But you have restored my energy and my courage. I feel strong enough, now, to defy the whole world in a struggle for the felicity that is rightfully ours. We shall live, Dolores, to belong to each other, to comfort each other.”
”Do not, I entreat you, ask me to live,” exclaimed Dolores, ”since the certainty of death alone decided me to speak.”
”But,” pleaded Philip, ”if I should succeed in rescuing you from the peril that surrounds us, would you be more rigorous than destiny? Would you not feel that G.o.d smiled upon our love, and that it was He who had mercifully united us again?”
”Philip! Philip!” murmured Dolores. She could say no more, but yielding at last to the sweet power of the love against which she had struggled so long, she laid her weary head upon the heart that wors.h.i.+pped her with such a tender and all-absorbing pa.s.sion.
It was nine o'clock in the morning when the officer who was to conduct the examination made his appearance. The expectations of Philip and Dolores were realized. He questioned them hastily, listened to the report of the sergeant who had arrested them, took a few notes, then ordered the culprits to be sent, one to the Conciergerie, the other to the Madelonnettes.
”Can we not be together?” asked Philip, filled with dismay by the prospect of a separation.