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Updated: June 21, 2025
Since Brigitte's departure, the duty of the porter, Coffinet, had been very negligently performed, and when la Peyrade rushed to the lodge to inquire for his letter, which he thought he saw in the case that belonged to him, the porter and his wife were both absent and their door was locked.
As surely as she slept now, as soon as I gave her cause for further suffering she would sleep in eternal rest. The clock struck and I felt that the last hour had carried away my life with hers. Unwilling to call any one, I lighted Brigitte's lamp; I watched its feeble flame and my thoughts seemed to flicker in the darkness like its uncertain rays.
It was Brigitte's aunt who had given her that little crucifix on her death-bed. 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!"
She stepped to her desk, opened it, drew out a package of letters tied together with a ribbon, and threw it at my feet without a word. But I was looking neither at her nor her letters; I had just thrown a stone into the abyss and was listening to the echoes. For the first time offended pride was depicted on Brigitte's face.
I was as though 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?
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!"
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.
When I heard that story, I wanted to see the hero. That simple, unassuming act of devotion seemed to me more admirable than all the glories of war. The more I examined that young man, the less I felt inclined to broach the subject nearest my heart. The idea which had first occurred to me that he would harm me in Brigitte's eyes, vanished at once.
"I rejected it, because it was offered without heartiness, and seasoned with Mademoiselle Brigitte's vinegar; every self-respecting man would have acted as I did. Give and keep don't pass, as the old legal saying is; but that is precisely what you persist in doing." "I! I think you took offence very unreasonably; but the engagement might be renewed."
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.
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