Page:The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter.djvu/299

“Ah! what happiness,” exclaimed the poor girl; “a winter’s night—it will be a long one.”

Jacques came back; he brought a muff with him.

“It is very pretty,” said Francine; “I will wear it when I go out.”

She passed the night with Jacques.

The next day—All Saints—about the middle of the day, the death agony seized on her, and her whole body began to quiver.

“My hands are cold,” she murmured; “give me my muff.”

And she buried her poor hands in the fur.

“It is the end,” said the doctor to Jacques. “Kiss her for the last time.”

Jacques pressed his lips to those of his love. At the last moment they wanted to take away the muff, but she clutched it with her hands.

“No, no,” she said, “leave it to me; it is winter, it is cold. Oh! my poor Jacques! my poor Jacques! what will become of you? Oh! heavens!”

And the next day Jacques was alone.

First Reader.—I told you that this was not a very lively story.

What would you have, reader? we cannot always laugh.

It was the morning of All Saints’. Francine was dead.

Two men were watching at the bedside; the one of them standing up was the doctor; the other, kneeling beside the bed, was pressing his lips to the dead girl’s hands, and seemed to seek to rivet them there in a despairing kiss. It was Jacques, her lover. For more than six hours he had been plunged into a state of heart-broken insensibility. An organ playing under the windows had just roused him from it.