When I reached the portico I saw Madeleine like a statue, motionless and erect, evidently listening to the sound of my steps.  Jacques was sitting in the portico.  His attitude expressed the same insensibility to what was going on about him that I had noticed when I first saw him; it suggested ideas such as we lay aside in some corner of our mind to take up and study at our leisure.  I have remarked that young persons who carry death within them are usually unmoved at funerals.  I longed to question that gloomy spirit.  Had Madeleine kept her thoughts to herself, or had she inspired Jacques with her hatred?

“You know, Jacques,” I said, to begin the conversation, “that in me you have a most devoted brother.”

“Your friendship is useless to me; I shall follow my mother,” he said, giving me a sullen look of pain.

“Jacques!” I cried, “you, too, against me?”

He coughed and walked away; when he returned he showed me his handkerchief stained with blood.

“Do you understand that?” he said.

Thus they had each of them a fatal secret.  I saw before long that the brother and sister avoided each other.  Henriette laid low, all was in ruins at Clochegourde.

“Madame is asleep,” Manette came to say, quite happy in knowing that the countess was out of pain.

In these dreadful moments, though each person knows the inevitable end, strong affections fasten on such minor joys.  Minutes are centuries which we long to make restorative; we wish our dear ones to lie on roses, we pray to bear their sufferings, we cling to the hope that their last moment may be to them unexpected.

“Monsieur Deslandes has ordered the flowers taken away; they excited Madame’s nerves,” said Manette.

Then it was the flowers that caused her delirium; she herself was not a part of it.

“Come, Monsieur Felix,” added Manette, “come and see Madame; she is beautiful as an angel.”

I returned to the dying woman just as the setting sun was gilding the lace-work on the roofs of the chateau of Azay.  All was calm and pure.  A soft light lit the bed on which my Henriette was lying, wrapped in opium.  The body was, as it were, annihilated; the soul alone reigned on that face, serene as the skies when the tempest is over.  Blanche 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.