The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay
Chapter 256 : THE GENERAL RECEIVES THE VISIT OF A PRIEST.In March he revived a little, and Mr. Tudor

THE GENERAL RECEIVES THE VISIT OF A PRIEST.

In March he revived a little, and Mr. Tudor no longer denied me hope; on the 18th Alex came to our arms and gratulations on his fellows.h.i.+p; which gave to his dearest father a delight the most touching.

I have no Diary in his honoured hand to guide my narrative in April; a few words only he ever wrote more, and these, after speaking of his sufferings, end with "Pazienza!

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Pazienza!"--such was his last written expression! 'Tis on the 5th of April. . . .

On the 3rd of May he reaped, I humbly trust, the fair fruit of that faith and patience he so pathetically implored and so beautifully practised.

At this critical period in April I was called down one day to Madame la Marquise de S-, who urged me to summon a priest of the Roman catholic persuasion to my precious sufferer. I was greatly disturbed every way; I felt in shuddering the danger she apprehended, and resisted its belief; yet I trembled lest I should be doing wrong. I was a protestant, and had no faith in confession to man. I had long had reason to believe that my beloved partner was a protestant, also, in his heart ; but he had a horror of apostasy, and therefore, as he told me, would not investigate the differences of the two religions; he had besides a tie which to his honour and character was potent and persuasive; he had taken an oath to keep the catholic faith when he received his Croix de St. Louis, which was at a period when the preference of the simplicity of protestantism was not apparent to him. All this made me personally easy for him, yet, as this was not known, and as nothing definite had ever pa.s.sed between us upon this delicate subject, I felt that he apparently belonged still to the Roman catholic church; and after many painful struggles I thought it my absolute duty to let him judge for himself, even at the risk of inspiring the alarm I so much sought to save him! . . . I compelled myself therefore to tell him the wish of Madame de S-, that he should see a priest. "Eh bien," he cried, gently yet readily, "je ne m'y oppose pas.

Qu'en penses tu?" I begged to leave such a decision wholly to himself.

Never shall I forget the heavenly composure with which my beloved partner heard me announce that the priest, Dr. Elloi, was come.

Cheerfully as I urged myself to name him, still he could but regard the visit as an invitation to make his last preparations for quitting mortal life. With a calm the most gentle and genuine, he said he had better be left alone with him, and they remained together, I believe, three hours. I was deeply disturbed that my poor patient should be so long without sustenance or medicine - but I durst not intrude, though anxiously I kept at hand in case of any sudden summons. When, at length, the priest re-appeared, I found Page 430

my dearest invalid as placid as before this ceremony, though fully convinced it was meant as the annunciation of his expected and approaching departure.

THE LAST SACRAMENT ADMINISTERED.

Dr. Elloi now came not only every day, but almost every hour of the day, to obtain another interview; but my beloved, though pleased that the meeting had taken place, expressed no desire for its repet.i.tion. I was cruelly distressed ; the fear of doing wrong has been always the leading principle of my internal guidance, and here I felt incompetent to judge what was right.

Overpowered, therefore, by my own inability to settle that point, and my terror lest I should mistake it, I ceased to resist ; and Dr. Elloi, while my patient was sleeping from opium, glided into his chamber, and knelt down by the bedside with his prayer book in his hand. Two hours this lasted; but when the doctor informed me he had obtained the general's promise that he should administer to him the last sacrament, the preparations were made accordingly, and I only entreated leave to be present.

This solemn communion, at which I have never in our own church attended with unmoistened eyes, was administered the same evening. The dear invalid was in bed: his head raised with difficulty, he went through this ceremony with spirits calm, and a countenance and voice of holy composure.

FAREWELL WORDS OF COUNSEL.

Thenceforth he talked openly, and almost solely, of his approaching dissolution, and prepared for it by much silent mental prayer. He also poured forth his soul in counsel for Alexander and myself. I now dared no longer oppose to him my hopes of his recovery - the season was too awful. I heard him only with deluges of long-restrained tears, and his generous spirit seemed better satisfied in thinking me now --awakened to a sense of his danger, as preparatory for supporting its consequence.

"Parle de moi." He said, afterwards, "Parle--et souvent. Surtout Alexandre; qu'il ne m'oublie pas!"(325)

"Je ne parlerai pas d'autre chose!"(326) I answered . . . and Page 431

I felt his tender purpose. He knew how I forbore ever to speak of my lost darling sister, and he thought the constraint injurious both to my health and spirits : he wished to change my mode with regard to himself by an injunction of his own. "Nous ne parlerons pas d'autre chose!" I added, "mon ami!--mon ami!--je ne survivrai que pour cela!"(327) He looked pleased, and with a calm that taught me to repress my too great emotion.

He then asked for Alexander, embraced him warmly, and half raising himself with a strength that had seemed extinct but the day before, he took a hand of Alexander and one of mine, and putting them together between both his own, he tenderly pressed them, exclaiming, "How happy I am! I fear I am too happy!"

Kindest of human hearts! His happiness was in seeing us together ere he left us his fear was lest he should too keenly regret the quitting us!

At this time he saw for a few minutes my dear sister Esther and her Maria, who had always been a great favourite with him. When they retired, he called upon me to bow my knees as he dropped upon his own, that he might receive, he said, my benediction, and that we might fervently and solemnly join in prayer to Almighty G.o.d for each other. He then consigned himself to uninterrupted meditation : he told me not to utter one word to him, even of reply, beyond the most laconic necessity. He desired that when I brought him his medicine or nutriment, I would give it without speech and instantly retire; and take care that no human being addressed or approached him. This awful command lasted unbroken during the rest of the evening, the whole of the night, and nearly the following day. So concentrated in himself he desired to be!--yet always as free from irritation as from despondence-- always gentle and kind even when taciturn, and even when in torture.

When the term of his meditative seclusion seemed to be over, I found him speaking with Alexander, and pouring into the bosom of his weeping son the balm of parental counsel and comfort. I received at this time a letter from my affectionate sister Charlotte, pressing for leave to come and aid me to nurse my dearest invalid. He took the letter and pressed it to his lips, saying, "Je l'aime bien; dis le lui. Et

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elle M'aime."(328) But I felt that she could do me no good. We had a nurse whose skill made her services a real blessing ; and for myself, woe, such as he believed approaching, surpa.s.sed all aid but from prayer and from heaven--lonely meditation.

When the morning dawned, he ordered Payne to open the shutters and to undraw the curtains. The prospect from the windows facing his bed was picturesque, lively, lovely: he looked at it with a bright smile of admiration, and cast his arm over his n.o.ble brow, as if hailing one more return of day' and light, and life with those he loved. But when, in the course of the day, something broke from me of my reverence at his heavenly resignation, "R?sign??" he repeated, with a melancholy half smile; "mais comme ?ah!" and then in a voice of tenderness the most touching, he added, "Te quitter!" I dare not, even yet, hang upon my emotion at those words!

That night pa.s.sed in tolerable tranquillity, and without alarm, his pulse still always equal and good, though smaller. On Sunday, the fatal 3rd of May, my patient was still cheerful, and slept often, but not long. This circ.u.mstance was delightful to my observation, and kept off the least suspicion that my misery could be so near.

THE END ARRIVES.

My pen lingers now!-reluctant to finish the little that remains.

About noon, gently awaking from a slumber, he called to me for some beverage, but was weaker than usual, and could not hold the cup. I moistened his lips with a spoon several times. He looked at me with sweetness inexpressible, and pathetically said, "Qui?"

He stopped, but I saw he meant "Who shall return this for you?" I instantly answered to his obvious and most touching meaning, by a cheerful exclamation of "You! my dearest ami! You yourself! You shall recover, and take your revenge." He smiled, but shut his eyes in silence. After this, he bent forward, as he was supported nearly upright by pillows in his bed, and taking my hand, and holding it between both his own, he impressively said, "Je ne sais si

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ce sera le dernier mot--mais ce sera la derni?re pens?e--notre r?union!"(329) Oh, words the most precious that ever the tenderest of husbands left for balm to the lacerated heart of a surviving wife! I fastened my lips on his loved hands, but spoke not. It was not then that those words were my blessing! They awed--they thrilled--more than they solaced me. How little knew I then that he should speak to me no more !

Towards evening I sat watching in my arm-chair, and Alex remained constantly with me. His sleep was so calm, that an hour pa.s.sed in which I indulged the hope that a favourable crisis was arriving; that a turn would take place by which his vital powers would be restored; but when the hour was succeeded by another hour, when I saw a universal stillness in the whole frame, such as seemed to stagnate all around, I began to be strangely moved. "Alex!" I whispered, "this sleep is critical! a crisis arrives! Pray G.o.d-- Almighty G.o.d!--that it be fav--." I could not proceed.

Alex looked aghast, but firm. I sent him to call Payne. I intimated to her my opinion that this sleep was important, but kept a composure astonis.h.i.+ng, for when no one would give me encouragement, I compelled myself to appear not to want it, to deter them from giving me despair. Another hour pa.s.sed of concentrated feelings, of breathless dread.

His face had still its unruffled serenity, but methought the hands were turning cold; I covered them - -I watched over the head of my beloved; I took new flannel to roll over his feet; the stillness grew more awful; the skin became colder.

Alex, my dear Alex, proposed calling in Mr. Tudor, and ran off for him.

I leant over him now with sal volatile to his temple, his forehead, the palms of his hands, but I had no courage to feel his pulse, to touch his lips.

Mr. Tudor came - he put his hand upon the heart, the n.o.blest of hearts, and p.r.o.nounced that all was over!

How I bore this is still marvellous to me! I had always believed such a sentence would at once have killed me. But his sight--the sight of his stillness, kept me from distraction! Sacred he appeared, and his stillness I thought should be mine, and be inviolable.

I suffered certainly a partial derangement, for I cannot to this moment recollect anything that now succeeded, with truth

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or consistency; my memory paints things that were necessarily real, joined to others that could not possibly have happened, yet so amalgamates the whole together as to render it impossible for me to separate truth from indefinable, unaccountable fiction.

Even to this instant I always see the room itself charged with a medley of silent and strange figures grouped against the wall just opposite to me, Mr. Tudor, methought, was come to drag me by force away; and in this persuasion, which was false, I remember supplicating him to grant me but one hour, telling him I had solemnly engaged myself to pa.s.s it in watching. . . .

But why go back to my grief? Even yet, at times, it seems as fresh as ever, and at all times weighs on me with a feeling that seems stagnating the springs of life. But for Alexander ,our Alexander!--I think I could hardly have survived. His tender sympathy, with his claims to my love, and the solemn injunctions given me to preserve for him, and devote to him, my remnant of life--these, through the Divine mercy, sustained me.

May that mercy, with its best blessings, daily increase his resemblance to his n.o.ble father.

March 20, 1820.

(288) M. d'Arblay, who was, it appears, still lame (boiteux) from the kick which he had received from a horse.-ED,

(289) Half-pay.