Part 42 (1/2)

What a sad day we have had to-day, poor M. Armand! This morning Marguerite was stifling; the doctor bled her, and her voice has returned to her a while. The doctor begged her to see a priest. She said ”Yes,”

and he went himself to fetch an abbe' from Saint Roch.

Meanwhile Marguerite called me up to her bed, asked me to open a cupboard, and pointed out a cap and a long chemise covered with lace, and said in a feeble voice:

”I shall die as soon as I have confessed. Then you will dress me in these things; it is the whim of a dying woman.”

Then she embraced me with tears and added:

”I can speak, but I am stifled when I speak; I am stifling. Air!”

I burst into tears, opened the window, and a few minutes afterward the priest entered. I went up to him; when he knew where he was, he seemed afraid of being badly received.

”Come in boldly, father,” I said to him.

He stayed a very short time in the room, and when he came out he said to me:

”She lived a sinner, and she will die a Christian.”

A few minutes afterward he returned with a choir boy bearing a crucifix, and a sacristan who went before them ringing the bell to announce that G.o.d was coming to the dying one.

They went all three into the bed-room where so many strange words have been said, but was now a sort of holy tabernacle.

I fell on my knees. I do not know how long the impression of what I saw will last, but I do not think that, till my turn comes, any human thing can make so deep an impression on me.

The priest anointed with holy oil the feet and hands and forehead of the dying woman, repeated a short prayer, and Marguerite was ready to set out for the heaven to which I doubt not she will go, if G.o.d has seen the ordeal of her life and the sanct.i.ty of her death.

Since then she has not said a word or made a movement. Twenty times I should have thought her dead if I had not heard her breathing painfully.

February 20, 5 P.M.

All is over.

Marguerite fell into her last agony at about two o'clock. Never did a martyr suffer such torture, to judge by the cries she uttered. Two or three times she sat upright in the bed, as if she would hold on to her life, which was escaping toward G.o.d.

Two or three times also she said your name; then all was silent, and she fell back on the bed exhausted. Silent tears flowed from her eyes, and she was dead.

Then I went up to her; I called her, and as she did not answer I closed her eyes and kissed her on the forehead.

Poor, dear Marguerite, I wish I were a holy woman that my kiss might recommend you to G.o.d.

Then I dressed her as she had asked me to do. I went to find a priest at Saint Roch, I burned two candles for her, and I prayed in the church for an hour.

I gave the money she left to the poor.

I do not know much about religion, but I think that G.o.d will know that my tears were genuine, my prayers fervent, my alms-giving sincere, and that he will have pity on her who, dying young and beautiful, has only had me to close her eyes and put her in her shroud.