It was, as the King had whispered to himself, De Beaurepaire's last night on earth, as it was also of those others. Of the woman he loved; of the vagabond who, bully though he might be, had been staunch and inflexible; of the old man who, the chief conspirator of all, was now to suffer the most ignominious of deaths.
In the chamber in the Bastille allotted to De Beaurepaire the prisoner sat now before the fire musing on what all would say when they knew of his end; of what his friends who had loved him well would feel, and of how his enemies, of whom he had so many, would gloat over his downfall. Naturally he thought also of the women who had loved him once and the women who loved him now, in this his darkest hour.
"The women who love me now!" he said to himself. "Who are they? Who? My mother and--and--Emérance. Emérance who is not fifty paces away from me, Emérance who dies by my side to-morrow, yet whom I may not see until, to-morrow, we stand on the same scaffold together. And then but for a moment ere the axe falls."
"Whom I may not see until to-morrow," he repeated. "Not until to-morrow."
And again he said to himself, "Not until to-morrow," while adding: "And there are so many long hours until three o'clock to-morrow!"
As though to corroborate this thought there boomed out the tones of the prison clock striking midnight, the sound being followed an instant later by the deeper boom of the great bell of Notre Dame and then by that of the other clocks in the city.
"Midnight," De Beaurepaire said. "Midnight. Fifteen hours yet of life, fifteen hours spent apart from her! And she here, close by. Ah! it is hard."
He rose from the chair he sat in and went across to the other side of the great fireplace where, in another chair, was seated the Père Bourdaloue reading his breviary. Some time before this the priest had prayed with him and would do so again at intervals during the night, while later--before the end came to-morrow--he would confess and absolve the condemned man as his brother priest would confess and absolve the others, with the exception of Van den Enden, who was resolute not to see either priest or minister of any faith. Now, however, as has been said, the good man read his breviary.
"Father," the condemned man said, standing before him and waiting to speak until he looked up from his book, "Father, help me to see her. I must see her ere we meet there. Below. Help me to bid her a last, a long farewell."
"To see her, my son! The woman who has brought you to this?"
"Nay! nay! Never. None has brought me to this but my own self; my own wickedness, my treachery and ambition. Above all, not she. Instead, her undoing lies heavy at my charge. Had she not loved me with a love passing the love of women, she might have gone free, have escaped. But--but--she grappled herself to me out of that great love and, as I fell, she fell with me. Let me see her once more. Here. To-night."
"What has this love of yours and hers been, Louis de Beaurepaire? The love that honours a woman in its choice, or the mad frenzy, the wild passion, the evil desires that sweep all boundaries and obstacles and laws aside even as the torrent sweeps aside all that stands in its way?"
"An honest love, heaven be praised. On my part the love of the captor for the poor maimed thing he has caught in his hand, and, even in bruising, soothes and comforts too. The love of one who cannot put aside that which, in capturing, he has thus come to love. Yet, further----"
"Yes. What?"
"Our love was not evil. For even as it quickened in our hearts we saw before us a pure, a nobler life that might, that should, be ours. If we had escaped from this our doom; had we never been taken, or, being taken, had we by chance been let go free--we should have wed. Our vows were sworn and deeply, too; they would have been kept."
"You would have kept them knowing what she was?"
"As she would have kept hers knowing what I was. What better am I than she? An intriguer, a traitor, even as she is an intrigante, a traitress; yet without her reasons, without her love of her own province as excuse, as extenuation. Had we wedded, our marriage would have but made us more akin and equal."
"If this is in your heart, the chance is still yours. Your vows may still be fulfilled. Louis de Beaurepaire, remembering who and what you are, remembering also who and what she is--as all learnt who were in the Arsenal at your confrontations--are you willing to make this woman your wife to-night?"
"Willing! To-night! Ay! willing a thousandfold. God help her! she has had no return for her attachment to such as I am; if this be an expiation, an atonement from me to her--even at this our last hour--it shall be hers. And--and--" he murmured so low that scarcely could the priest hear him, "for me it will be happiness extreme. To die by her side though only as her lover might have brought its little share of comfort; to die by her side--I her husband, she my wife--will make death happiness. Yet," he exclaimed, looking down suddenly at the priest from his great height, "can you do this? Can this be lawful? Without flaw or blemish?"
"In our holy Church's eyes? Yes."
"And in the law's eyes?"
"The law cannot over-rule us."
"Hasten then, father, to make us one."
"I will go seek the Lieutenant du Roi, yet it needs not even that. Alas! too often have I passed the last night in this place with other prisoners to make any permission necessary for what I do. Yet this I must do," he said, withdrawing the key of the door from his pocket, putting it in the lock and then opening the door itself.
And De Beaurepaire, observing, smiled grimly.
"I could not escape if I would, yet I have no thought of that," he said. "He who awaits at the altar steps the woman he loves seeks flight no more than I who now await her."
After he had heard the key turned in the lock outside, he sat down in his chair again and gave himself up to further meditation. Perhaps--it might well be!--he thought in those moments of all that he had thrown away, with, last of all, his life: perhaps he thought how he, who had once been the chosen comrade of the King, was now to meet his death for his treachery to that King. Above all he must have thought of the proud, handsome woman who was his mother; the woman who, haughty, disdainful of all others, had worshipped and idolised him. And she was not yet old, he remembered; in spite of the early blanching of her hair she was not yet fifty, and he had entailed upon her so bitter a shame that, henceforth, her once great life must be passed in grey, dull obscurity. Her life that had hitherto been so splendid and bright!
"Almost," he whispered, "I could bring myself to pray that God may see fit to take her soon. How shall she continue to live when I am dead, and dead in such a way; for such a sin?"
He thought also of others now, on whom, perhaps, in different circumstances, he would scarcely have bestowed a thought or memory.
He thought of Humphrey West whose death had been so treacherously attempted--thanking heaven devoutly, fervently, as he did so, that in this, at least, he had had no hand or knowledge; and he recalled, too, the gentle loving girl who was, as the Père Bourdaloue had told him only an hour or so earlier, to become Humphrey's bride within a month. That it was not in this man's nature to pray for the happiness of any human being, is not, perhaps, strange, remembering what his own existence had been; yet now, with more gentle, more humane thoughts possessing that nature it was also not strange that he should be able to hope their lives together would be long and pleasant.
"And," he said to himself, Pagan-like to the last, "had I served another as he served me, faithfully and honestly, as a friend, so would I, like him, have denounced that other as he denounced me when set upon and almost done to death by that other's myrmidons. He held the ace--he would have been more than man if he refused to throw it."
Of one other, however, he thought little and cared less. He had never loved the Duchesse de Castellucchio, beautiful as she was; he had regarded her only as a woman who might by a fortunate chance, if the Pope should prove yielding, be able to rehabilitate him in the eyes of the world--and able also to free him from the load of debt that bore him down. Able to assist him to regain the pinnacle to which by his birth and rank he was entitled, but from which by his own failings and errors he had been hurled headlong.
"Nor," he said, and once more he smiled bitterly, "did she love me. Has one of her family ever loved aught but himself or herself? But I served her turn, I enabled her to escape out of France and from her demoniac. While, had a pis-aller been required, a De Beaurepaire might well have replaced a Ventura. Now she is safe in Italy and I am here. She should be content."
The key grated in the lock as the doomed man mused thus upon the woman whom he had helped to save from a hateful life; and the bitterness of his fate must stand as atonement for his thoughts of one who was far from being the hard, selfish creature he pronounced her.
A moment later the other woman, the woman he loved so fondly, was by his side. Behind her followed the Père Bourdaloue, who, after bidding two of the gendarmerie to remain outside until he called them, went to the farther end of the room and left the lovers as much alone as was possible.
"Louis!" Emérance exclaimed, as she drew near him. "Louis! Once more we are together. Louis! Louis! Oh! my love."
"Mon amour. Ma mie," he cried, clasping her in his arms, while, as he did so, he saw that, though her face was white--white as the long gown (tied round her waist with a cord) which she now wore, and in which to-morrow, nay, to-day! she would go to the scaffold--there was still upon that face, in those soft eyes, a look of happiness extreme. "Thank God it is so. And he," with a look at the priest at the farther end of the room, "has told you? We shall die, we shall go to our death together as man and wife."
"Nay," Emérance whispered, though as she did so her arms had sought his neck and enlaced it, "Nay, not as that. But----"
"Not as that! You--you who love me so--will not be my wife?"
"I am your wife. In heart, in soul, in every thought, in every fibre of my being. There is nought of me that is not you, that is not De Beaurepaire now. What would an idle ceremony, performed over us by him," with a glance towards the priest, "and witnessed by those soldiers outside, do for us? Could I love you more in the few hours that I should be your wife than I have loved you, not being your wife? Shall we sleep less calmly and peacefully in our graves to-morrow and for ever--yes, for ever!--because that ceremony has not been performed? Louis, there is no wedded wife in all this world to-night who loves her lawful husband more madly than I love you to whom no tie binds me. And--I was a wife once, and my husband beat and ill-used me, and I hated him. You are no husband of mine and I adore, I worship, you."
"But--but--once--we--spoke of marriage, of being wed. Of a life to be passed together."
"There is no life left to us to pass together. Only this hour, these moments--now. When we spoke of that wedded life which should, which might, be ours; when you thought of stooping from your high estate to marry such as I am, there was a hope for us. We might have escaped when we had failed in our attempt--succeed we never could!--and then have been together always. Always. Always. Now," and the soft, clear eyes were very close to the dark eyes of the man so near to her, "we may not be wedded but--I thank God for it--neither shall we ever more be parted. Together we have lived and loved for--how long? A month--six weeks--two months--ah! I cannot well recall. To-morrow brings us together for all eternity."
"You will not be my wife!" De Beaurepaire said again, his voice hoarse, lost in his throat. "You can be so--great--as to reject the one poor repayment I can make for your sweet, your precious, love?"
"Repayment! Does love need repayment? Can there be debtor and creditor in that? And--if so--why, then Louis, Louis, mon adore, have you not repaid? You--such as you--to me!"
"My children," the Père Bourdaloue said, turning round and advancing to them, "the night is passing. If you will be wed, now is the time. The Lieutenant du Roi granted you an hour together for that purpose, that hour is running through."
"Father," the woman said, advancing towards him, standing before him so white and pale, yet with, on her face, so calm, so happy a look that he could recall no other dying woman--even as she passed peacefully away surrounded by all who loved her and whom she loved--who had seemed as calm and happy as she. "Father, there is no need. We are wedded."
"Wedded!" he exclaimed. "Wedded! You are wedded?"
"Ay. As much as two need ever be who love each other as we love, who go hand in hand to their doom, to their grave; to that eternal parting which will be an eternal union. Take me," she said now, "back to my cell. To-morrow I shall come forth a bride."
"And you?" Bourdaloue asked, looking at De Beaurepaire. "Are you agreed?"
"As she will have it so let it be," De Beaurepaire answered.
"Come then," the priest said. "Come."
Following him, Emérance took two or three steps towards the door then, suddenly, she stopped and laid her hand on Bourdaloue's arm, although as she spoke her eyes were fixed upon her lover.
"Father," she said, "my life has not been all evil, yet--yet--God help and pity me!--it has not been that of an upright woman, but of one who has been a spy, a conspirator. Not that which my mother prayed it might be as she lay dying. But--if--if--there is aught of atonement for that life, it is that I freely, gladly, yield it up so that as I leave the world I leave it with him whom, of all men alone, I have loved."
A moment later she was back by her lover's side, once more her arms were around his neck, once more she was clasped to his heart.
"To-morrow. To-morrow. To-morrow, we shall be together," she whispered. "Ah! mon amour adoré, to-morrow I shall be yours only. To-morrow and for ever."
"You will be brave?" he murmured back. "You will not fear?"
"Be brave!" she repeated. "Brave! Why! what should I fear when you are by my side? When I have all I ask."