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Page 68
Lucan began at once to climb the path again, supporting and almost
dragging Julia, who had nearly fainted.
He had at last the gratification of setting his foot upon a projection of
the ground, a sort of narrow esplanade jutting from the rock. He succeeded
in drawing Julia upon it. But she sank at once in his arms, and her head
rested upon his chest. He could hear her arteries and her heart throbbing
with frightful force. Then, gradually, her agitation subsided. She lifted
her head gently, opened her long eyelashes, and looking at him with
rapturous eyes:
"I am so happy!" she murmured; "I wish I could die so!"
Lucan pushed her off from him the length of his arm, then, suddenly
seizing her again and clasping her tightly to his heart, he cast upon her
a troubled glance, and then another upon the abyss. She certainly thought
they were about to die. A slight tremor passed across her lips; she
smiled; her head half rolled back:
"With you?" she said--"what happiness!"
At the same moment, the sound of voices was heard a short distance above
them. Lucan recognized Clotilde's and the count's voices. His arm suddenly
relaxed and dropped from Julia's waist. He pointed out to her, without
speaking, but with an imperious gesture, the path that wound around the
rock.
"Without you, then!" she said, in a gentle and proud tone. And she began
ascending.
Two minutes later, they reached the plateau above the cliff, and related
to Clotilde the perils of their ascension, which explained sufficiently
their evident agitation. At least they thought so.
During the evening of this same day, Julia, Monsieur de Moras, and
Clotilde were walking after dinner under the evergreens of the garden.
Monsieur de Lucan, after keeping them company for a short time, had just
retired, under pretense of writing some letters. He remained, however, but
a few minutes in the library, where the sound of the others' voices
reached his ears and disturbed his attention. A desire for absolute
solitude, for meditation, perhaps also some whimsical and unaccountable
feeling, led him to that very ladies' walk stamped for him with such an
indelible recollection.
He walked slowly through it for some time, in the deepening shades with
which the falling night was rapidly filling it. He wished to consult his
soul, as it were, face to face, to probe like a man his mind to its utmost
depths. What he discovered there terrified him. It was a mad intoxication,
which the savor of crime further heightened. Duty, loyalty, honor, all
that rose before his passion to oppose it only exasperated its fury. The
pagan Venus was gnawing at his heart, and instilling her most subtle
poisons into it. The image of the fatal beauty was there without truce,
present in his burning brain, before his dazzled eyes; he inhaled with
avidity and in spite of himself, its languor, its perfume, its breath.
The sound of light footsteps upon the sand caused him to suspend his
march. He caught through the darkness a glimpse of a white form
approaching him.
It was she!
Without giving scarce a thought to the act, he threw himself behind the
obscure angle formed by one of those massive pillars that supported the
ruins against the side of the hill. A mass of verdure made the darkness
there more dense still. She went by, her eyes fixed upon the ground, with
her supple and rhythmical step. She walked as far as the little pond that
received the waters of the brook, stood dreaming for a few moments upon
its edge, and then returned. A second tune she went by the ruins, without
raising her eyes, and as if deeply absorbed. Lucan remained convinced that
she had not suspected his presence, when suddenly she turned her head
slightly around, without interrupting her march, and she cast behind her
that single word, "Farewell," in a tone so gentle, so musical, so
sorrowful, that it was somewhat like the sound of a tear falling upon a
sonorous crystal.
That minute was a supreme one. It was one of those moments during which a
man's life is decided for eternal good or for eternal evil. Monsieur de
Lucan felt it so. Had he yielded to the attraction of passion, of
intoxication, of pity, that was urging him with almost irresistible force
on the footsteps of that beautiful and unhappy woman--that was on the
point of casting him at her feet, upon her heart--he felt that he became
at once and forever a lost and desperate soul. Such a crime, were it even
to remain wholly ignored, separated him forever from all he had ever
respected, all he had ever held sacred and inviolate; there was nothing
left for him either upon earth or in heaven; there was no longer any
faith, probity, honor, friend, or God! The whole moral world vanished for
him in that single instant.
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