Arthur by Eugène Sue - HTML preview

CHAPTER XXX
 THE FLIGHT

SERVAL, 10th March, 18—.

I open again this journal which I have not written a line in for three months.

I wish to write one more date, one last page here at Serval, in this poor old paternal château that I am about to leave, perhaps, for ever.

Strange coincidence! It was here that my mundane life began with my love for Hélène.

It is here my mundane life is to end with my love for Marie.

Henceforth she and I mean to live in the greatest seclusion. Oh, if we are only able to realise our dreams, our life will be one of enchantment.

But by how many cruel trials it will have been purchased.

For three months Marie has been weeping in secret! but little by little I have been able to overcome her resistance.

At last she has consented to fly with me.

Besides, she dare not, she cannot, remain here; she is about to become a mother!

And now, my faithful George, who has been living in Nantes to keep a watch on Duvallon, wrote me this morning that a man I cannot fail to recognise as Belmont arrived last night at the house of the old corsair.

I told Marie of his return, and then she decided.

How would she dare to appear before her husband?

And how could she bear the reproaches of her aunt?

To-morrow night, then, we are to depart secretly.

So as to be sure of no mistakes, let me set down what I have arranged to do.

Send relays of horses before me as far as ——, across the country, so as to leave no traces; it is twenty-five leagues shorter.

Take the mail coach at ——, and in thirty hours we will be at the frontier.

Once outside of France, and the first noise of our elopement calmed, we will wait to see what happens. Perhaps we will return, perhaps Belmont will be arrested.

DOUX REPOS, September, 18—.

You have asked me, Marie, to tell you the story of my whole life.

We have broken off all connection with the world.

Retired from society, here in this peaceful and charming abode, we have been living for two years with our dear child, and ineffably happy.

You have been my angel, my saviour, my god, my love, my only treasure, because you possess all the riches of heart, mind, and soul.

In the midst of our solitude, each day brings a new joy that makes you dearer to my heart.

Thus the pearls of the sea owe their imperishable lustre to the shadows of each succeeding wave.

You often tell me, Marie, that my nature is noble, generous, and, above all, good.

When you will have read this journal of my whole life, Marie, my beautiful and gentle Marie, you will find out that I have often been hard-hearted and wicked.

That goodness for which you praise me, it is to you that I owe it!

Under your holy influence, my beautiful guardian angel, all my bad instincts have disappeared, all my highest sentiments have been exalted; in a word I have loved you, I love you now as you deserve to be loved.

To love you thus, and to be loved by you, Marie, is to believe oneself the first and noblest of men, to despise glory, ambition, fortune, to feel above them all.

It is to have gone beyond the limits of all possible happiness.

This superhuman happiness would alarm me, had we not purchased it by your sorrow and remorse, poor Marie!

This remorse has been, and still is, your only grief; the time has come to deliver you from it.

You shall be told the truth about the man you married, whom you have believed to be in prison as a political criminal, for these last two years.

Later you will know why I hid this secret from you until now.

These lines which I now write in this journal retrace almost all the events of my life, up to the moment when we quitted Serval together. They will be the last I shall write in it.

Why should I henceforth need such a cold confidant?

It is in your angelic heart, Marie, that I will trace all my thoughts; or, rather, it is there that I will leave the imprint of the perfect bliss that intoxicates me.

You will read this journal, Marie; you will see that I have been very guilty, that I have suffered greatly.

You will read the story of our love from its very inception.

Since leaving Serval I have ceased to write in this journal. What could I have written? Whatever I have said, Marie, will apply to the future years I shall spend with you.

You will not find here the date of the birth of our Arthur,—our child,—the greatest joy of my life. Nor will you find the date of that terrible day on which I trembled for your life, my day of most fearful torture.

While the paroxysm of that unknown joy, of that unknown grief, lasted, I neither thought, reflected, nor acted, I did not exist.

When one still has the consciousness of one's sufferings, when one can contemplate one's own joy, then neither has joy nor sorrow arrived at its highest degree.

I had thus far suffered atrociously. I had experienced the most intense delights, but I had never been so absorbed as to lose self-consciousness, or the power of self-investigation.

I have spoken of an unknown happiness, Marie, and yet the date of the blissful day when I no longer doubted of your love is written in this journal, while the date of our Arthur's birth is not found here.

Your tender soul will understand and appreciate the difference, will it not?

As for our child, Marie, our beautiful and adorable child, we will think of his future, and—

These were the last words of the journal of an unknown.

By looking at the dates, and comparing them with the information given me by the curé of the village of ——, in the first volume, one can see that this last passage must have been written the day or the day before the triple assassination of the count, Marie, and their child, by Belmont, the pirate of Porquerolles, who, having escaped from prison, and knowing the retreat of the count, wished to wreak upon him a terrible vengeance before leaving France for ever.

THE END.