de Solivet decided on remaining
with him, while the Count came on to fetch me. He had ridden ever
since four o'clock in the morning, and yet was ready to set out again
as soon as my preparations were complete. Oh, I can never overlook
what he was to me on that journey!
Hope kept us up through that dismal country--the path of war, where
instead of harvest on the August day we saw down-trodden, half-burned
wheat fields, where a few wretched creatures were trying to glean a
few ears of wheat. Each village we passed showed only blackened
walls, save where at intervals a farmhouse had been repaired to serve
as an estafette for couriers from the French army. The desolation of
the scene seemed to impress itself on my soul, and destroy the hopes
with which I had set forth; but on and on we went, till the walls of
Brisach rose before us.
He was in the governor's quarters, and only at the door, I perceived
the M. d'Aubepine had much doubted whether we should find him alive.
However, that one consolation was mine. He knew me; he smiled again
on me; he called me by all his fondest names; he said that now he
could rest. For twenty-four hours we really thought that joy was
working a cure. Alas! then he grew worse again, and when the pain
left him, mortification had set in, and we could only send for a
priest to administer the last Sacraments.
I am an old woman now, and what was then the cruelest anguish touches
me with pleasure when I think how he called me his guardian angel,
and thanked me for having been his shield from temptation, placing
his son in my sole charge, and commending his sister and his old
uncle to me--his poor little sister whose lot seemed to grieve him so
much.
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