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They drew back, and allowed her to arrange the death-couch according to her own will. She could not bear the stiff and rigid position in which they had placed him, but laid the hands gently and naturally down.
Behind that group, shadowed by the Thorn-tree, stands the PREACHER, thoughtful and grave, foreseeing the grief that must come to the old man with the morrow, when he will learn that a guilty son nears his end, and will hasten to comfort Jasper's last days with pardon. But the Preacher looks not down to the death-couch alone; on and high over death looks the Preacher!
The goddess whose boons adorn the outward shell of the human spirit came back to her favourite's death-couch as she had come to the cradle not now as the Venus Erycina, goddess of Smile and Jest, but as the warning Venus Libitina, the goddess of Doom and the Funeral. "I'm a very poor creature," said Jasper, after a pause. "I can't rise I can't move without help. Very strange supernatural!
Of how she had sat by an old Grenadier's death-couch, to sing to him, refusing to stir, though it was a fete at Chalons, and she loved fetes as only a French girl can. Of how she had ridden twenty leagues on a saddleless Arab horse, to fetch the surgeon of the Spahis to a Bedouin perishing in the desert of shot-wounds.
Every object of his pleasure or regard was treasured as a sacred thing. Even the withered flowers that had bedecked his death-couch were preserved with pious care, and no unloving hand could touch a single article that had once felt the impress of the now palsied fingers.
Let trumpets give the signal for assembling. Order the bells to be rung! In an hour all must be ready at St. Martin's cathedral! Bring torches here, I say! Have I the right to command yes or no? A large oak coffin was standing at the joiner's close by. Bring it here, here; I need a better death-couch for my mother. You poor, dear woman, how you loved flowers, and no one has brought you even one!
Here the earth was broken, and rendered uneven by some fifty or sixty hillocks; some marked by a single pine board, others without even this frail memorial by which the death-couch might be traced. On the outskirts of this humble burial-place they found a fragment of rock, half buried in the rich turf, and overrun with wild flowers, mingled with fresh young moss.
As the youthful mourner reached the death-couch, the kings-at-arms were about to present to him the aspergillus, in order that he might sprinkle the corpse with the consecrated water, when a movement among the nobles who stood near the entrance of the apartment caused them to pause; and in another moment a group of ladies, attired in deep mourning, appeared beneath the portico; where, separating into two ranks, they left a passage open for the widowed Queen; who, clad in violet velvet like her son, with a high ruff, and her head uncovered, advanced with an unsteady step and streaming eyes towards her children.
The poor girl was weeping out her passionate sorrow in the arms of her friend, who bent over her with such tender sympathy that her face was almost concealed. As Lord Hope advanced toward the death-couch, old Mrs. Yates arose and stood before him.
Let trumpets give the signal for assembling. Order the bells to be rung! In an hour all must be ready at St. Martin's cathedral! Bring torches here, I say! Have I the right to command yes or no? A large oak coffin was standing at the joiner's close by. Bring it here, here; I need a better death-couch for my mother. You poor, dear woman, how you loved flowers, and no one has brought you even one!
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