crime is that I did not feel this before today, and that I let you love me... But when her face suddenly appeared to me, when I saw on that poor face all the sorrow I saw, I could not bear that all of it should be of my own making... No. No. Do not blame me... Let me go, and give “her” back her happiness... But that is not all I wanted to say!
And I saw drops of sweat wetting her forehead. Then she shut her eyes, as though she wished to go back into blindness! And in a sad, mournful voice she began to speak, her voice rising little by little to the pitch of fervor:
— When I received my sight, my eyes opened upon a world more beautiful than I had ever dreamed. Never had I imagined the daylight so clear, the air so brilliant, the sky so vast. But neither had I imagined the brows of men so careworn. And when I entered your house, do you know what I saw? I saw — the first thing I saw — a sin, our sin. No — do not protest! Remember the words of the Lord Christ: “If ye were blind, ye should have no sin!” And now rise, pastor. Do not interrupt me; let me finish:
— When I was in the hospital I asked to have read to me, from the Holy Book, passages I did not know. I spent a whole day repeating the saying of Paul the Apostle:
“For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died!!”
She was speaking with the utmost fervor and in a loud voice, and when she came to these last words she repeated:
“Sin revived, and I died”
— and I shuddered from head to foot, and asked her:
— Who read you the epistle of Saint Paul?
— It was Jacques, your son; I sent for him to come to the
hospital. Do you know that he has been converted?
This was more than I could bear, and I was on the point of begging her to be silent, but she went on:
— My friend, I shall bring you much grief, but it is better that no lie remain between us... When I saw Jacques, I knew for certain that it was he whom I loved, and not you! He had your face — I mean, your face as I used to imagine it while I was blind... Ah, why did you decree that he should be kept from me? I could have married him!
I cried out in despair:
— And you still can, Gertrude!
She said gravely:
He has entered the religious life. Then the tears choked her, and she was in a state of rapture of soul when she said:
— Ah, I want to confess to Jacques. You see that nothing is left me but to die. I am thirsty! Please call someone to me. I am suffocating! Leave me alone. I had hoped I should find rest after saying what I have said. Leave me! Let us part — I can no longer bear to see you!!!
So I left her, and called Miss M to take my place. I feared for her life, and was certain that my nearness made her condition more dangerous.”
*
From the pastor's diary on the third day:
“It was decreed that I should never see her again except in her last sleep. She died today at dawn, after a night of exhaustion and crisis.
Jacques arrived some hours after her death. And so at a single stroke I lost my son and Gertrude; it is as though, having been parted from each other, they resolved to flee from me together and be united in God.
When we parted, Jacques said to me:
— Father, it is not for me to reproach you; but it was your error that guided me.
In the evening I went down on my knees and asked my wife to pray for me, so sorely did I stand in need of help. With surpassing simplicity she recited the Lord's Prayer, keeping between verse and verse long silences, which the supplications of our two souls filled.
And I begged for tears. But how could I? My heart was drier than the desert!!!”
(Abridged from the French)
Attractive, bewitching...! But... she lacks Mum
Mum
A bouquet of flowers — its fragrance redoubled
from the hidden places of your captivating body
Use Mum after the bath
and in the days of your companionship...
intoxicated by the fragrance of the body
and especially in the summer season