He reached the noble poplar beneath which he had meditated so much for the last forty days, and where he had placed two heavy stones on which he now sat down.He contemplated that beautiful nature lighted by the moon; he reviewed once more the glorious future he had longed for; he passed through towns that were stirred by his name; he heard the applauding crowds; he breathed the incense of his fame; he adored that life long dreamed of; radiant, he sprang to radiant triumphs; he raised his stature; he evoked his illusions to bid them farewell in a last Olympic feast.The magic had been potent for a moment; but now it vanished forever.In that awful hour he clung to the beautiful tree to which, as to a friend, he had attached himself; then he put the two stones into the pockets of his overcoat, which he buttoned across his breast.He had come intentionally without a hat.He now went to the deep pool he had long selected, and glided into it resolutely, trying to make as little noise as possible, and, in fact, making scarcely any.
When, at half-past nine o'clock, Madame Granson returned home, her servant said nothing of Athanase, but gave her a letter.She opened it and read these few words,--"My good mother, I have departed; don't be angry with me.""A pretty trick he has played me!" she thought."And his linen! and the money! Well, he will write to me, and then I'll follow him.These poor children think they are so much cleverer than their fathers and mothers."And she went to bed in peace.
During the preceding morning the Sarthe had risen to a height foreseen by the fisherman.These sudden rises of muddy water brought eels from their various runlets.It so happened that a fisherman had spread his net at the very place where poor Athanase had flung himself, believing that no one would ever find him.About six o'clock in the morning the man drew in his net, and with it the young body.The few friends of the poor mother took every precaution in preparing her to receive the dreadful remains.The news of this suicide made, as may well be supposed, a great excitement in Alencon.The poor young man of genius had no protector the night before, but on the morrow of his death a thousand voices cried aloud, "I would have helped him." It is so easy and convenient to be charitable gratis!
The suicide was explained by the Chevalier de Valois.He revealed, in a spirit of revenge, the artless, sincere, and genuine love of Athanase for Mademoiselle Cormon.Madame Granson, enlightened by the chevalier, remembered a thousand little circumstances which confirmed the chevalier's statement.The story then became touching, and many women wept over it.Madame Granson's grief was silent, concentrated, and little understood.There are two forms of mourning for mothers.
Often the world can enter fully into the nature of their loss: their son, admired, appreciated, young, perhaps handsome, with a noble path before him, leading to fortune, possibly to fame, excites universal regret; society joins in the grief, and alleviates while it magnifies it.But there is another sorrow of mothers who alone know what their child was really; who alone have received his smiles and observed the treasures of a life too soon cut short.That sorrow hides its woe, the blackness of which surpasses all other mourning; it cannot be described; happily there are but few women whose heart-strings are thus severed.
Before Madame du Bousquier returned to town, Madame du Ronceret, one of her good friends, had driven out to Prebaudet to fling this corpse upon the roses of her joy, to show her the love she had ignored, and sweetly shed a thousand drops of wormwood into the honey of her bridal month.As Madame du Bousquier drove back to Alencon, she chanced to meet Madame Granson at the corner of the rue Val-Noble.The glance of the mother, dying of her grief, struck to the heart of the poor woman.
A thousand maledictions, a thousand flaming reproaches, were in that look: Madame du Bousquier was horror-struck; that glance predicted and called down evil upon her head.
The evening after the catastrophe, Madame Granson, one of the persons most opposed to the rector of the town, and who had hitherto supported the minister of Saint-Leonard, began to tremble as she thought of the inflexible Catholic doctrines professed by her own party.After placing her son's body in its shroud with her own hands, thinking of the mother of the Saviour, she went, with a soul convulsed by anguish, to the house of the hated rector.There she found the modest priest in an outer room, engaged in putting away the flax and yarns with which he supplied poor women, in order that they might never be wholly out of work,--a form of charity which saved many who were incapable of begging from actual penury.The rector left his yarns and hastened to take Madame Granson into his dining-room, where the wretched mother noticed, as she looked at his supper, the frugal method of his own living.
"Monsieur l'abbe," she said, "I have come to implore you--" She burst into tears, unable to continue.
"I know what brings you," replied the saintly man."I must trust to you, madame, and to your relation, Madame du Bousquier, to pacify Monseigneur the Bishop at Seez.Yes, I will pray for your unhappy child; yes, I will say the masses.But we must avoid all scandal, and give no opportunity for evil-judging persons to assemble in the church.I alone, without other clergy, at night--""Yes, yes, as you think best; if only he may lie in consecrated ground," said the poor mother, taking the priest's hand and kissing it.