and
Henriette, two sublime faces of the same woman, reappeared; all the more
beautiful because my recollection, my thought, my imagination, aiding
nature, repaired the devastation of each dear feature, where now the
soul triumphant sent its gleams through the calm pulsations of her
breathing. The two abbes were sitting at the foot of the bed. The count
stood, as though stupefied by the banners of death which floated above
that adored being. I took her seat on the sofa. We all four turned to
each other looks in which admiration for that celestial beauty mingled
with tears of mourning. The lights of thought announced the return of
the Divine Spirit to that glorious tabernacle.

The Abbe Dominis and I spoke in signs, communicating to each other our
mutual ideas. Yes, the angels were watching her! yes, their flaming
swords shone above that noble brow, which the august expression of her
virtue made, as it were, a visible soul conversing with the spirits of
its sphere. The lines of her face cleared; all in her was exalted and
became majestic beneath the unseen incense of the seraphs who guarded
her. The green tints of bodily suffering gave place to pure white tones,
the cold wan pallor of approaching death. Jacques and Madeleine entered.
Madeleine made us quiver by the adoring impulse which flung her on her
knees beside the bed, crying out, with clasped hand: "My mother! here is
my mother!" Jacques smiled; he knew he would follow her where she went.

"She is entering the haven," said the Abbe Birotteau.

The Abbe Dominis looked at me as if to say: "Did I not tell you the star
would rise in all its glory?"

Madeleine knelt with her eyes fixed on her mother, breathing when she
breathed, listening to the soft breath, the last thread by which she
held to life, and which we followed in terror, fearing that every effort
of respiration might be the last. Like an angel at the gates of the
sanctuary, the young girl was eager yet calm, strong but reverent. At
that moment the Angelus rang from the village clock-tower. Waves of
tempered air brought its reverberations to remind us that this was the
sacred hour when Christianity repeats the words said by the angel to the
woman who has redeemed the faults of her sex. "Ave Maria!"--surely, at
this moment the words were a salutation from heaven. The prophecy was so
plain, the event so near that we burst into tears. The murmuring sounds
of evening, melodious breezes in the leafage, last war