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Updated: May 9, 2025
Content had flooded the universe all through and through now that yonder, unseen as yet, the scarlet-faced sun was toiling up the rim of the world, and matters, it somehow seemed, could not turn out so very ill, in the end. Matthiette came to a hut, from whose open window a faded golden glow spread out into obscurity like a tawdry fan. From without she peered into the hut and saw Raoul.
"Farewell, niece," said Sieur Raymond, smiling; "I rejoice that you are cured of your malady. Now in respect to gerfalcons " said he. The arras fell behind them. Obdurate Love Matthiette sat brooding in her room, as the night wore on. She was pitifully frightened, numb. There was in the room, she dimly noted, a heavy silence that sobs had no power to shatter.
And see, Raoul!" She drew the dagger from her bosom. "I shall not survive you a long while, O man of all the world!" Perplexed joy flushed through his countenance. "You will do this for me?" he cried, with a sort of sob. "Matthiette, Matthiette, you shame me!" "But I love you," said Matthiette. "How could it be possible, then, for me to live after you were dead?" He bent to her. They kissed.
Matthiette stirred uneasily. "Is love, then, nothing?" she murmured. "Love!" Sieur Raymond barked like a kicked mastiff. "It is very discreetly fabled that love was brought forth at Cythera by the ocean fogs. Thus, look you, even ballad-mongers admit it comes of a short-lived family, that fade as time wears on.
"Dear love," said he, "you have chosen wisely, and I bow to your decision. Farewell, Matthiette, O indomitable heart! O brave perfect woman that I have loved! Now at the last of all, I praise you for your charity to me, Love's mendicant, ah, believe me, Matthiette, that atones for aught which follows now.
Now we come to the root of the matter." He sank back in his chair and smiled. "Young people," said he, "be seated, and hearken to the words of wisdom. Love is a divine insanity, in which the sufferer fancies the world mad. And the world is made up of madmen who condemn and punish one another." "But," Matthiette dissented, "ours is no ordinary case!"
Matthiette heard the querulous birds call sleepily above; the margin of night was thick with their petulant complaints; behind her was the monstrous shadow of the Chateau d'Arnaye, and past that was a sullen red, the red of contused flesh, to herald dawn.
Matthiette turned from the window. Now, her bright audacity gone, her ardors chilled, you saw how like a grave, straightforward boy she was, how illimitably tender, how inefficient. "It may be that I have decided wrongly in this tangled matter," she said now. "And yet I think that God, Who loves us infinitely, cannot be greatly vexed at anything His children do for love of one another."
"Mademoiselle," said he, "I do not doubt that you love me." She went wearily toward the window. "I am not very wise," Matthiette said, looking out upon the gardens, "and it appears that God has given me an exceedingly tangled matter to unravel. Yet if I decide it wrongly I think the Eternal Father will understand it is because I am not very wise." Matthiette for a moment was silent.
So love one another, my children, by all means: but do you, Matthiette, make ready to depart into Normandy as a true and faithful wife to Monsieur de Puysange; and do you, Raoul de Prison, remain at Arnaye, and attend to my falcons more carefully than you have done of late, or, by the cross of Saint Lo! I will clap the wench in a convent and hang the lad as high as Haman!"
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