one their interview till
the rector could come to her, expressing a wish to rest for a while.
Aline watched beside her.

At midnight Madame Graslin awoke, and asked for the archbishop and
rector, whom Aline silently showed her close at hand, praying for her.
She made a sign dismissing her mother and the maid, and, at another
sign, the two priests came to the bedside.

"Monseigneur, and you, my dear rector," she said, "will hear nothing you
do not already know. You were the first, Monseigneur, to cast your eyes
into my inner self; you read there nearly all my past; and what you read
sufficed you. My confessor, that guardian angel whom heaven placed near
me, knows more; I have told him all. You, whose minds are enlightened
by the spirit of the Church, I wish to consult you as to the manner in
which I ought as a true Christian to leave this life. You, austere
and saintly spirits, think you that if God deigns to pardon one whose
repentance is the deepest, the most absolute, that ever shook a human
soul, think you that even then I have made my full expiation here
below?"

"Yes," said the archbishop; "yes, my daughter."

"No, my father, no!" she said rising in her bed, the lightning flashing
from her eyes. "Not far from here there is a grave, where an unhappy man
is lying beneath the weight of a dreadful crime; here in this sumptuous
home is a woman, crowned with the fame of benevolence and virtue. This
woman is blessed; that poor young man is cursed. The criminal is covered
with obloquy; I receive the respect of all. I had the largest share in
the sin; he has a share, a large share in the good which has won for me
such glory and such gratitude. Fraud that I am, I have the honor; he,
the martyr to his loyalty, has the shame. I shall die in a few hours,
and the canton will mourn me; the whole department will ring with my
good deeds, my piety, my virtue; but he died covered with insults, in
sight of a whole population rushing, with hatred to a murderer, to see
him die. You, my judges, you are indulgent to me; yet I hear within
myself an imperious voice which will not let me rest. Ah! the hand of
God, less tender than yours, strikes me from day to day, as if to warn
me that all is not expiated. My sins cannot be redeemed except by a
public confession. He is happy! criminal, he gave his life with ignominy
in face of earth and heaven; and I, I cheat the world as I cheated human
justice. The homage I receive humiliates me; prai