For two nights she had had no sleep; on the third she was exhausted and slept soundly, and dreamed a sweet--wonderfully sweet dream.
It seemed to her that she met her beloved in the garden. A delicious perfume was wafted from the crown of the lindens, soft greenish shadows spread twilight over the earth, and all nature, as in measureless rapture, held its breath, no lightest touch of air stirred--she lay in his arms, love-enchanted and his lips closed her mouth.
Thus she dreamed--when suddenly she sprang up as if one had struck her heart with an iron hammer.
Was not that the sound of a horse's hoof which broke on the stillness of night? In her long white nightdress she flew to the window.
She recognised him, notwithstanding the speed of his horse, and in spite of the curtain of darkness with which midnight sought to veil his figure. She bent far over the window-breasting and stretched out her arms; a frightful longing confused her senses, and she sang--poor child!--without knowing what the words meant:
"Si tu veux m'apaiserRedonne--moi la viePar l'esprit d'un baiser."Heureux sera le jourQuand je mourrai d'amour!"
"Si tu veux m'apaiserRedonne--moi la viePar l'esprit d'un baiser.
"Heureux sera le jourQuand je mourrai d'amour!"
Louder and louder the voice swelled out, piercing as a cry of anguish; yet full of a powerful sweetness the song echoed through the sultry stillness of night. It struck the ear of the rider. He checked his horse, looked around him, and then spurred the animal anew until he leaped wildly on.
She bent forward--farther forward,--"Plus d'espoir!" she groaned. Her heart was so heavy, so heavy! Beneath, the dew glistened like a silver sheen over the azure fields, out of which an angel seemed calling her to "Cool rest--cool rest!"
She bent forward--forward! and then fell many, many fathoms deep into the moat below.
* * * * *
The heavy fall was heard in the castle, and soon the servants with torches hurried forth to see what had happened.
There, below, glimmered something white as a blossom broken off by the storm. They climbed down. The light of the torches played over a pale, lovely face which smiled in death. She was not disfigured, not a particle of dust, not a speck of mud or soil of earth, adhered to her white garment, although she had fallen among plants growing in the mud. In spotless purity the white folds wound about her beautiful limbs. And when the people saw this, they marvelled, and said, "A miracle!" Then one pressed through the throng, deathly pale with distorted face--Henri de Lancy!
But Gottfried coldly turned him away from the dead maiden.
Right tenderly the old soldier lifted the lovely body in his arms, murmuring:
"Her heart was broken--she is released!"
It was an age full of horrors, when the noblest blood of illustrious Hellenism rose up to face a background of battles, orgies, and pulpit harangues. It was not only a period in which Lorenzo de' Medici, in disguise and at the head of a bacchanalian troop tore through the streets of Florence; Benvenuto Cellini stabbed his enemies at the street corners; Pope Leo at a cardinal's supper presented a sacrifice of doves to the Goddess of Love upon a white marble altar, and offered to his favourite, Raphael, a cardinal's hat in payment of his bills--but a time also when Savonarola preached the loftiest asceticism; Rabelais, in the midst of his obscene rhapsodies, created the wonderful idyl of l'Abbaye de Telesme; Fra Angelico on his knees painted his picture of Christ, and the triumphal procession of an emperor ended in a monastery!
A time full of enigmas! and among the many enigmas which lived in it, was one of a sad, silent monk, of whom his cloister-brethren asserted that he once had led a very dissolute life, but now was the most absorbeddèvoté.
And whilst King Francis, at variance with himself and the world, tried to maintain, even to the end, the appearance of ostentatious levity, and to win fresh renown as a patron of art, and to console himself for his lost self-respect with the flatteries of the Duchess d'Etampes, this monk devoted every single hour which remained to him, after the barest satisfaction of his physical needs, and the fulfilment of his religious duties, to one and the same work,--a sweet girl's head,--which he, with his slender, effeminate, courtier's hand, formed out of wax after a death mask, and ever again re-formed, and could never finish to his own satisfaction. Discouraged, disappointed, he destroyed each day the work of the preceding until finally, in the very last year of his life he became more tranquil, and then under his never-weary hands arose an exquisite maiden's head with a sweet, thoughtful expression of face,--the little head bent forward as if listening to a great joy, yet weighed down by the presentiment of a terrible pain!
And he worked at the head on his knees, like Fra Angelico at his ecstatic pictures of saints, and he coloured it most beautifully--but still, not as if it were the head of a living maiden, but as of one who had died in the freshness of youth. When he succeeded, he smiled and closed his eyes for ever.
After long wanderings, the bust has found a resting-place in the museum at Lille. Full of a dreamy pathos, it stands in its glass case--an atonement for Love betrayed--in memory of the bitterest repentance.
As the embodiment of an old legend, it interests us and seems to say: "A tear for Blanche of Montalme; for Henri de Lancy--a prayer!"