Part 82 (2/2)

There were so many things worse than death. One of these was to live as Madeleine had lived. Never that! Never! Not now,--once, perhaps; but not now. Oh, no; not now!

The river seemed to beckon to her,--to call upon her, reproachfully, to come back to it,--to open its slimy arms and invite her to the palpitating bosom that had soothed the sorrows of so many thousands of the children of civilization.

And Fouchette was the offspring of the river. Why had she been spared, then? Had it proved worth while?

She recalled every incident of that eventful period. She remembered the precise spot where she had been pulled out that gray morning, years before.

This idea had flitted through her mind, at first vaguely, then, still unsought, began to a.s.sume definite shape.

Eh, bien,--soit! From the river to the river!

Mlle. Fouchette, as we have seen, had all the spontaneity of her race, accentuated by a life of caprice and reckless abandon. To conceive was to execute. Consequences were an after-consideration, if at all worthy of such a thing as consideration.

She stopped. But this hesitation was not in the execution of her suddenly formed purpose. It was necessary to recover breath, and to decide whether to go by the way of the Rue Clovis, or to turn down by the steep of Rue de la Mont Ste. Genevieve to the Boulevard St.

Germain.

It was but for a few panting moments.

The clock of the ancient campanile of the Lycee Henri IV. struck the hour of eleven. The hoa.r.s.e, low, booming sound went sullenly rumbling and roaring up and down the stone-ribbed plaza of the Pantheon, and rolled and reverberated from the great dome that sheltered the ill.u.s.trious dead of France.

The curious old church of St. etienne du Mont rose immediately in front of the girl, and the sound of the bells startled her,--shook her ideas together,--and, with the sight of the church, restored, in a measure, her presence of mind.

Her thoughts flew instantly back to the happy scene she had recently left behind. The bells of the old tower,--ah! how often she and Jean had regulated their menage by their music!

And she looked up at the grimly mixed pile of four centuries, with its absurd little round tower, its grotesque gargouilles, and gra.s.s-grown walls,--St. etienne du Mont.

Doubtless they would be married here.

To be married where reposed the blessed bones of Ste. Genevieve, or at St. Denis amid the relics of royalty, was the dream of every youthful Parisienne. And Ste. Genevieve was the patronne of the virgins as well as of the city of Paris.

Mlle. Fouchette had witnessed a wedding at good old St. etienne du Mont,--indeed, any one might see a wedding here upon any day of the week, and at almost any hour of the day, in season,--and she now recalled the pretty scene. Yes, of course Jean and Andree would be married here.

Obeying a curious impulse, the girl, still breathing heavily, ascended the broad stone steps and peeped into the little vestibule. The dark baize door within stood ajar, and she could see the faint twinkle of distant lights and smell the escaping odors from the last ma.s.s.

She would go in--just for a moment--to see again where they would stand before the altar. It would do no harm. Her last thoughts should be of those she loved,--loved dearer--yes, a great deal more dearly than life.

Entering, she mechanically followed her training at Le Bon Pasteur, and, bending a knee, dipped the tips of her fingers in the font and crossed her heaving breast.

The great wax tapers were still burning about the ancient altar, and here and there pairs and bunches of expiatory candles flickered in the little chapels.

As no other light relieved the sombre blackness of the vaulted edifice, an indefinite ghostliness prevailed, from out of which the numerous gilded forms of the Virgin and the saints appeared half intangible, as if hovering about with no fixed support or substance.

The church might have been deserted, so far as any living indications were visible, though two or three darker splotches on the darkness could have been taken for as many penitents seeking the peace which pa.s.seth understanding.

Gliding softly down the right, outside of the pews and row of stately columns, Mlle. Fouchette stopped only at the last pillar, from which she had a near view of the pretty white altar. She remained there, leaning against the pillar, her eyes bent upon the altar, motionless, for a long time.

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