Adieu, my only love! adieu, dear image of two souls that will soon be reunited! Adieu, my only joy--pure joy! adieu, my own beloved!" "Let me follow thee!" cried Etienne.
"It would be your better fate!" she said, two tears rolling down her livid cheeks; for, as in former days, her eyes seemed to read the future.

"Did any one see him ?" she asked of the two men.
At this instant the duke turned in his bed; they all trembled.
"Even my last joy is mingled with pain," murmured the duchess.

"Take him away! take him away!" "Mother, I would rather see you a moment longer and die!" said the poor lad, as he fainted by her side.
At a sign from the duchess, Bertrand took Etienne in his arms, and, showing him for the last time to his mother, who kissed him with a last look, he turned to carry him away, awaiting the final order of the dying mother.
"Love him well!" she said to the physician and Bertrand; "he has no protectors but you and Heaven." Prompted by an instinct which never misleads a mother, she had felt the pity of the old retainer for the eldest son of a house, for which his veneration was only comparable to that of the Jews for their Holy City, Jerusalem.

As for Beauvouloir, the compact between himself and the duchess had long been signed.

The two servitors, deeply moved to see their mistress forced to bequeath her noble child to none but themselves, promised by a solemn gesture to be the providence of their young master, and the mother had faith in that gesture.
The duchess died towards morning, mourned by the servants of the household, who, for all comment, were heard to say beside her grave, "She was a comely woman, sent from Paradise." Etienne's sorrow was the most intense, the most lasting of sorrows, and wholly silent.