The Abbe Birotteau laid a finger on his lips.  At that sign the dying woman bowed her head, faintness overcame her; presently she waved her hands as if summoning the clergy and her children and the servants to her presence, and then, with an imploring gesture, she showed me the desolate count and the children beside him.  The sight of that father, the secret of whose insanity was known to us alone, now to be left sole guardian of those delicate beings, brought mute entreaties to her face, which fell upon my heart like sacred fire.  Before receiving extreme unction she asked pardon of her servants if by a hasty word she had sometimes hurt them; she asked their prayers and commended each one, individually, to the count; she nobly confessed that during the last two months she had uttered complaints that were not Christian and might have shocked them; she had repulsed her children and clung to life unworthily; but she attributed this failure of submission to the will of God to her intolerable sufferings.  Finally, she publicly thanked the Abbe Birotteau with heartfelt warmth for having shown her the illusion of all earthly things.

When she ceased to speak, prayers were said again, and the curate of Sache gave her the viaticum.  A few moments later her breathing became difficult; a film overspread her eyes, but soon they cleared again; she gave me a last look and died to the eyes of earth, hearing perhaps the symphony of our sobs.  As her last sigh issued from her lips,—­the effort of a life that was one long anguish,—­I felt a blow within me that struck on all my faculties.  The count and I remained beside the bier all night with the two abbes and the curate, watching, in the glimmer of the tapers, the body of the departed, now so calm, laid upon the mattress of her bed, where once she had suffered cruelly.  It was my first communion with death.  I remained the whole of that night with my eyes fixed on Henriette, spell-bound by the pure expression that came from the stilling of all tempests, by the whiteness of that face where still I saw the traces of her innumerable affections, although it made no answer to my love.  What majesty in that silence, in that coldness!  How many thoughts they expressed!  What beauty in that cold repose, what power in that immobility!  All the past was there and futurity had begun.  Ah!  I loved her dead as much as I had loved her living.  In the morning the count went to bed; the three wearied priests fell asleep in that heavy hour of dawn so well known to those who watch.  I could then, without witnesses, kiss that sacred brow with all the love I had never been allowed to utter.