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Updated: June 21, 2025
I was as if drunken or insensate when I saw that effigy of Christ on Brigitte's bosom; while not believing in Him myself, I recoiled, knowing that she believed in Him. It was not vain terror that arrested my hand. Who saw me? I was alone and it was night. Was it prejudice? What prevented me from hurling out of my sight that little piece of black wood?
By a single word, perhaps, for those who have loved. I had taken Brigitte's hand, and, in a dream, doubtless, she had pronounced my name. I arose and went to my room; a torrent of tears flowed from my eyes. I held out my arms as if to seize the past which was escaping me. "Is it possible," I repeated, "that I am going to lose you? I can love no one but you. What! you are going away? And forever?
He would have refused to carry them, he said, had he known what they contained. On account of Brigitte's tone of reserve in his presence, I did not think he was in her confidence. I therefore welcomed him with pleasure, although there was always a sort of awkward embarrassment in our meeting. He was asked to act as intermediary between Brigitte and her relatives after our departure.
It was Brigitte's aunt who had given her that little crucifix on her deathbed. I did not remember ever having seen it before; doubtless, at the moment of setting out, she had suspended it about her neck as a preserving charm against the dangers of the journey. Suddenly I joined my hands and knelt on the floor. "O Lord, my God," I said, in trembling tones, "Lord, my God, thou art there!"
But, while unable to divine the cause of Brigitte's sorrow, I saw that my past conduct, whatever she might say of it, had something to do with her present state. If I had been what I ought to have been for the last six months that we had lived together, nothing in the world, I was persuaded, could have troubled our love.
She went down, but she lingered a moment in the peristyle for any sound that might waken the sleeping echoes of the town. She smiled at Brigitte's husband, who was standing there on guard; the man's eyes looked stupid with the strain of listening to the faint sounds of the night. She stared into the darkness, seeing her son in every shadow everywhere; but it was only for a moment.
Have you never accepted the arm of an unknown as you accepted mine? Was it merely charity that served as your divinity in that beautiful temple of verdure that you visited so bravely?" Brigitte's glance when I adopted this tone I shall never forget; I shuddered at it myself. "But, bah!"
As I finished these words I directed the knife I held in my hand against Brigitte's bosom. I was no longer master of myself, and in my delirious condition I know not what might have happened; I threw back the bed-clothing to uncover the heart, when I discovered on her white bosom a little ebony crucifix. I recoiled, seized with sudden fear; my hand relaxed, my weapon fell to the floor.
I picked it up; it was a letter, and I recognized Brigitte's hand. The envelope was not sealed. I opened it and read as follows: 23 December, 18 "When you receive this letter I shall be far away from you, and shall perhaps never see you again. My destiny is bound up with that of a man for whom I have sacrificed everything; he can not live without me, and I am going to try to die for him.
But despite all this, despite all his efforts, he was sad, and I could not get rid of strange thoughts that came to my mind. The tears I had seen that young man shed, his illness coming on at the same time as Brigitte's, I know not what melancholy sympathy I thought I discovered between them, troubled and disquieted me.
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