PART II.
CHAPTER I.
Three years have passed, rapidly.
Franchita is alone at home, ill and in bed, at the end of a November
day.--And it is the third autumn since her son's departure.
In her hands, burning with fever, she holds a letter from him, a letter
which should have brought only joy without a cloud, since it announces
his return, but which causes in her, on the contrary, tormented
sentiments, for the happiness of seeing him again is poisoned now by
sadness, by worry especially, by frightful worry--
Oh, she had an exact presentiment of the sombre future, that night when,
returning from escorting him on the road to departure, she returned to
her house with so much anguish, after that sort of defiance hurled at
Dolores on the street: it was cruelly true that she had broken then
forever her son's life!--
Months of waiting and of apparent calm had followed that scene, while
Ramuntcho, far from his native land, was beginning his military service.
Then, one day, a wealthy suitor had presented himself for Gracieuse and
she, to the entire village's knowledge, had rejected him obstinately in
spite of Dolores's will. Then, they had suddenly gone away, the mother
and the daughter, pretexting a visit to relatives in the highland; but
the voyage had been prolonged; a mystery more and more singular had
enveloped this absence,--and suddenly the rumor had come that Gracieuse
was a novice among the sisters of Saint Mary of the Rosary, in a convent
of Gascony where the former Mother Superior of Etchezar was the abbess!--
Dolores had reappeared alone in her home, mute, with a desolate and evil
air. None knew what influence had been exercised over the little girl
with the golden hair, nor how the luminous doors of life had been closed
before her, how she had permitted herself to be walled in that tomb; but,
as soon as the period of novitiate had been accomplished, without seeing
even her brother, she had taken her vows there, while Ramuntcho, in a
far-off colonial war, ever distant from the post-offices of France, among
the forests of a Southern island, won the stripes of a sergeant and a
military medal.
Franchita had been almost afraid that he would never return, her
son.--But at last, he was coming back. Between her fingers, thin and
warm, she held the letter which said: "I start day after to-morrow and I
will be with you Saturday night." But what would he do, at his return,
what would he make of his life, so sadly changed? In his letters, he had
obstinately refrained from writing of this.
Anyway, everything had turned against her. The farmers, her tenants, had
left Etchezar, leaving the barn empty, the house more lonely, and
naturally her modest income was much diminished. Moreover, in an
imprudent investment, she had lost a part of the money which the stranger
had given for her son. Truly, she was too unskilful a mother,
compromising in every way the happiness of her beloved Ramuntcho,--or
rather, she was a mother upon whom justice from above fell heavily
to-day, because of her past error.--And all this had vanquished her, all
this had hastened and aggravated the malady which the physician, called
too late, did not succeed in checking.
Now, therefore, waiting for the return of her son, she was stretched on
her bed, burning with fever.
