William Kirby

“ People feel no pain, but die smiling as if angels had kissed away their breath. Is it not a precious toy, Mademoiselle?"
"Oh, blessed vial!" exclaimed Angelique, pressing it to her lips, "thou art my good angel to kiss away the breath of the lady of Beaumanoir! She shall sleep on roses, La Corriveau, and you shall make her bed!"
"It is a sweet death, befitting one who dies for love, or is killed by the jealousy of a dainty rival," replied the witch; "but I like best those draughts which are most bitter and not less sure." ”

“ Always love me! That is my reward. That is all I ask, all my utmost imagination could desire."
"And this little hand, Amelie, will be forever mine?"
"Forever, Pierre, and the heart along with it."
He raised her hand reverently to his lips and kissed it. "Let it not be long," said he. "Life is too short to curtail one hour of happiness from the years full of trouble which are most men's lot."
"But not our lot, Pierre; not ours. With you I forbode no more trouble in this life, and eternal joy in the next." ”

“ The steeple of the old Church of Notre Dame des Victoires, with its gilded vane, lay far beneath the feet of the observer as he leaned over the balustrade of iron that guarded the gallery of the Chateau.
A hum of voices and dense sounds rose up from the market of Notre Dame and from the quay where ships and bateaux were moored. The cries of sailors, carters, and habitans in thick medley floated up the steep cliffs, pleasant sounds to the ear of the worthy Governor, who liked the honest noises of industry and labor better than all the music of the Academy. ”

“ She glided like a dark spectre through the forest of Beaumanoir, and returned to the city to tell Angelique des Meloises that the arms of the Intendant were now empty and ready to clasp her as his bride; that her rival was dead, and she had put herself under bonds forever to La Corriveau as the price of innocent blood.
La Corriveau reached the city in the gray of the morning; a thick fog lay like a winding-sheet upon the face of nature. The broad river, the lofty rocks, every object, great and small, was hidden from view. ”

“ Love is like a bright river when it springs from the fresh fountains of the heart. It flows on between fair and ever-widening banks until it reaches the ocean of eternity and happiness.
The days illuminated with the brightest sunshine are those which smile over the heads of a loving pair who have found each other, and with tender confessions and mutual avowals plighted their troth and prepared their little bark for sailing together down the changeful stream of time.
So it had been through the long Indian summer days with Pierre Philibert and Amelie de Repentigny. ”

“ He could at that moment have knelt at her feet and worshipped in her the realization of every image which his imagination had ever formed of a perfect woman.
Now and then she played on the harp for Le Gardeur the airs which she knew he liked best. His sombre mood yielded to her fond exertions, and she had the reward of drawing at last a smile from his eyes as well as from his lips. The last she knew might be simulated, the former she felt was real, for the smile of the eye is the flash of the joy kindled in the glad heart. ”

“ Angélique fell into a deep fit of musing, and murmured to herself, “I shall never reach Bigot unless she be removed—but how to remove her?”
Ay, that was the riddle of the Sphinx! Angélique's life, as she had projected it, depended upon the answer to that question.
She trembled with a new feeling; a shiver ran through her veins as if the cold breath of a spirit of evil had passed over her. A miner, boring down into the earth, strikes a hidden stone that brings him to a dead stand. So Angélique struck a hard, dark thought far down in the depths of her secret soul. ”

“ Lady de Tilly sat listening as she held the hands of her two nieces, thinking how merciless was Fate, and half rebelling in her mind against the working of Providence. The sweet song of Mere St. Borgia fell like soft rain upon her hard thoughts, and instilled a spirit of resignation amid the darkness, as she repeated the words, "Ave, Joseph!" She fought bitterly in her soul against giving up her two lambs, as she called them, to the cold, scant life of the cloister, while her judgment saw but too plainly that naught else seemed left to their crushed and broken spirits. ”

“ I wish I had been a man, for my part," replied La Corriveau, impetuously. "It was a spiteful cross of fate to make me a woman!"
"But, Dame Dodier, I like to be a woman, I do. A man cannot be half as wicked as a woman, especially if she be young and pretty," said the old woman, laughing till the tears ran out of her bleared eyes.
"Nay, that is true, Mere Malheur; the fairest women in the world are ever the worst! fair and false! fair and false! they are always so. Not one better than another. Satan's mark is upon all of us!" ”

“ Bigot, in his fiery eagerness, had hitherto ridden foremost. Cadet now led the way, dashing under the boughs of the great trees that overhung the road. The tramp of their horses woke the echoes of the woods. But they were not long in reaching the park of Beaumanoir.
They saw before them the tall chimney-stacks and the high roofs and the white walls of the Chateau, looking spectral enough in the wan moonlight,--ghostly, silent, and ominous. One light only was visible in the porter's lodge; all else was dark, cold, and sepulchral. ”

“ And yet how unlike to human eye were these two women!--how like in God's eye, that sees the heart and reads the Spirit, of what manner it is! Angelique, radiant in the bloom of youth and beauty, her golden hair floating about her like a cloud of glory round a daughter of the sun, with her womanly perfections which made the world seem brighter for such a revelation of completeness in every external charm ”

“ Angélique shuddered, and pressed still closer to him, as if in fear.
“Mère Malheur would not tell me the meaning of that star, but bade me, if a saint, to watch and wait; if a sinner, to watch and pray. What means Algol, Le Gardeur?” she half faltered.
“Nothing for you, love. A fig for all the stars in the sky! Your bright eyes outshine them all in radiance, and overpower them in influence. All the music of the spheres is to me discord compared with the voice of Angélique des Meloises, whom alone I love!” ”

“ He continued aloud, "The love of such a woman is truly given away, Amelie; no one can merit it! It is a woman's grace, not man's deserving."
"I know not," said she; "it is not hard to give away God's gifts: love should be given freely as God gives it to us. It has no value except as the bounty of the heart, and looks for no reward but in its own acceptance."
"Amelie!" exclaimed he, passionately, turning full towards her; but her eyes remained fixed upon the ground. "The gift of such a woman's love has been the dream, the ambition of my life! ”

“ Oh, say my wife!”
“Yes, your wife, Pierre! Your true and loving wife forever.”
“Forever! Yes. Love like ours is imperishable as the essence of the soul itself, and partakes of the immortality of God, being of him and from him. The Lady de Tilly shall find me a worthy son, and Le Gardeur a true and faithful brother.”
“And you, Pierre! Oh, say it; that blessed word has not sounded yet in my ear—what shall I call you?” And she looked in his eyes, drawing his soul from its inmost depths by the magnetism of her look.
“Your husband,—your true and loving husband, as you are my wife, Amélie.” ”

“ Pierre Philibert would ask her no question to which she might not answer, she said to herself.
Amelie replied to him slowly, but undoubtingly: "I think there are such women, Pierre," replied she, "women who would never, even in the regions of despair, forsake the man whom they truly love, no, not for all the terrors recorded in that awful book of Dante!"
"It is a blessed truth, Amelie," replied he, eagerly; and he thought, but did not say it, "Such a woman you are; the man who gets your love gets that which neither earth nor heaven nor hell can take away." ”

“ It is Nature's last rejoicing in the sunshine and the open air, like the splendor and gaiety of a maiden devoted to the cloister, who for a few weeks is allowed to flutter like a bird of paradise amid the pleasures and gaieties of the world, and then comes the end. Her locks of pride are shorn off; she veils her beauty, and kneels a nun on the cold stones of her passionless cell, out of which, even with repentance, there comes no deliverance.
Mère Malheur's arrival at Beaumanoir was speedily known to all the servants of the Château. ”

“ For human love other than as a degraded menial, to make men the slaves of her mercenary schemes, La Corriveau cared nothing. She never felt it, never inspired it. She looked down upon all her sex as the filth of creation and, like herself, incapable of a chaste feeling or a pure thought. Every better instinct of her nature had gone out like the flame of a lamp whose oil is exhausted; love of money remained as dregs at the bottom of her heart. A deep grudge against mankind, and a secret pleasure in the misfortunes of others, especially of her own sex, were her ruling passions. ”

“ Thus soliloquized Angélique for a few moments, looking gloomy and beautiful as Medea, when the step of De Pean sounded up the broad stair.
With a sudden transformation, as if touched by a magic wand, Angélique sprang forward, all smiles and fascinations to greet his entrance.
The Chevalier de Pean had long made distant and timid pretensions to her favor, but he had been overborne by a dozen rivals. He was incapable of love in any honest sense; but he had immense vanity. He had been barely noticed among the crowd of Angélique's admirers. ”

“ All the way back to the Palace, Bigot had scarcely spoken a word to Cadet. His mind was in a tumult of the wildest conjectures, and his thoughts ran to and fro like hounds in a thick brake darting in every direction to find the scent of the game they were in search of. When they reached the Palace, Bigot, without speaking to any one, passed through the anterooms to his own apartment, and threw himself, dressed and booted as he was, upon a couch, where he lay like a man stricken down by a mace from some unseen hand. ”

“ At the head of the table, first in place as in rank, sat François Bigot, Intendant of New France. His low, well-set figure, dark hair, small, keen black eyes, and swarthy features full of fire and animation, bespoke his Gascon blood. His countenance was far from comely,—nay, when in repose, even ugly and repulsive,—but his eyes were magnets that drew men's looks towards him, for in them lay the force of a powerful will and a depth and subtlety of intellect that made men fear, if they could not love him. ”

“ The word he pleaded for hovered on her tongue, ready like a bird to leap down into his bosom; but she resolutely beat it back into its iron cage.
The struggle was the old one—old as the race of man. In the losing battle between the false and true, love rarely comes out of that conflict unshorn of life or limb. Untrue to him, she was true to her selfish self. The thought of the Intendant and the glories of life opening to her closed her heart, not to the pleadings of Le Gardeur,—them she loved,—but to the granting of his prayer. ”

“ Tears and sorrow she had welcomed in a spirit of bitter penitence for her fault in loving one who no longer regarded her. “I do not deserve any man's regard,” murmured she, as she laid her soul on the rack of self-accusation, and wrung its tenderest fibres with the pitiless rigor of a secret inquisitor. She utterly condemned herself while still trying to find some excuse for her unworthy lover. At times a cold half-persuasion, fluttering like a bird in the snow, came over her that Bigot could not be utterly base. ”

“ He held fast her dead hands, and gazed upon her dead face until the heart-breaking sobs of Héloise, and the appeals of Mère Esther, roused him from his stupor.
He rose up, and, lifting Amélie in his arms, laid her upon a couch tenderly and reverently, as a man touches the holiest object of his religion. Amélie was to him a sacrament, and in his manly love he worshipped her more as a saint than as a woman, a creation of heavenly more than of earthly perfections. ”

“ Amélie de Repentigny will not yield her heart without her judgment; but when she does, it will be a royal gift—never to be recalled, never to be repented of, to the end of her life. Happy the man upon whom she shall bestow her affection! It will be his forever. Unhappy all others who may love her! She may pity, but she will listen to no voice but the one which rules her heart, to her life's end! ”