The Will to Live (Les Roquevillard) by Henry Bordeaux

THE good will of the presiding judge hastened the formalities of liberation, and while the crowd, having left the court-room, massed itself in the space outside the court-house, to watch for Maurice and his defender to come out, and to cheer them, the more enthusiastically because their remorse was tardily shown, Mr. Roquevillard was waiting for his son in the inner court. He was alone, for he had asked Charles Marcellaz to see Mr. Hamel home. The struggle over, he felt tired and worn, and was lost in his meditations. A timid voice called to him:

"Father."

"Is it you, Maurice?"

Instead of throwing themselves into each other's arms, quite simply, they stood motionless, as if frozen. The lack of some first gesture is enough sometimes to create separations, to make obstacles. On his son's face the father read admiration, gratitude, filial piety; on the father's face the son read love and goodness, but also the new stigmata of weariness and age. They said nothing; sorrowfully, with a shyness they could not overcome.

In the street outside they heard the noise of cheers.

"Come," said Mr. Roquevillard brusquely.

He led Maurice to the other side of the courtyard, where a gate opened on a public garden, luckily now deserted. He crossed it with rapid steps, hurried quickly over the iron footbridge beneath which rolled the muddy waters of the Leysse, and the two men reached the cemetery presently without having exchanged a word.

The cemetery at Chambéry lies to the eastward of the town, at the beginning of the vast plain which stretches as far as Lake Bourget; over it the rocky hill of Lemenc stands guard, and beyond that the regularly storeyed peaks of Le Nivolet. The shadows of night were already settling down over the sacred field, and little by little reaching the hills, but the setting sun still covered the mountain, stirring its whiteness as with a flow of blood -- one of those fine winter evenings that are cold and calm, naked as marble images, and of a divine purity.

Maurice could distinguish, opposite him, the thin columns of the Calvary where his heart's love had overwhelmed him. A last ray of light threw their outlines into relief, then they seemed to recede against the walls of the little monument and lose themselves in it.

"How far away it all is! " he thought.

Some cypress trees, with branches like lance-heads, sprinkled with hoar-frost, stood grave as sentinels set to guard the enclosure. Passing these, they went on and on, past the graves of the poor, scarcely distinguished by the mounds beneath the snow, until they came finally to the broad avenue of perpetual concessions.

"Father, I know where we are going," murmured Maurice at last, thinking of his mother.

"We're going to our family tomb," explained Mr. Roquevillard; "to thank our dead for having saved you."

"Father, it was you that saved me," said Maurice.

"I was speaking in their name."

As they drew near the end of their pilgrimage, they made out, across the empty graveyard, a black figure kneeling before the gravestone which stood just before a wall covered with inscriptions.

"Father, look; there's some one there," said Maurice.

"It's Margaret! She has got here ahead of us."

The girl heard the dull noise of their footsteps on the trodden snow, and turned her head. She blushed on recognising them, and rose, as if she would go and not be in the way at their first interview.

"I came here to be near mamma," she said.