But with the morning the
earth would have swallowed those drops of human life as silently as
the river-quicksand had sucked down the bodies of the betrayed and
the betrayer;--in neither case would Nature have any hint to give of
the tragedy enacted. Nature is a dumb witness to many dramas,--and
it may be that she has eyes and ears and her own way of keeping
records. Sometimes she gives up long-buried secrets, sometimes she
holds them fast;--biding her time until the Judgment Day, when not
only the crime shall be disclosed but the Cause of the crime's
committal. And it may chance in certain cases, such as those of men
who have deliberately ruined the lives of trusting and loving women,
that the Cause may be proved a more criminal thing than the crime!
That night Martine Doucet slept badly, and had horrible dreams of
being dragged by force to Rome, and there taken before the Pope who
at once deprived her of her son Fabien, and ordered her to be shot
in one of the public squares for neglecting to attend Mass
regularly. And Jean Patoux and his wife, reposing on their virtuous
marital couch, conversed a long time about the unexpected and
unwelcome visit of Claude Cazeau, and the mission he had declared
himself entrusted with from the Vatican,--"And you may depend upon
it," said Madame sententiously, "that he will get his way by fair
means or foul! I am thankful that neither of OUR children were
subjects for a Church-miracle!--the trouble of the remedy seems more
troublesome than the sickness!"
"No, no," said her husband, "Thou dost not judge these things
rightly, my little one! God worked the remedy, as He works all good
things,--and there would be no trouble about it if it were not for
the men's strange way of taking it.
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