A Dominican monk was then standing
almost at her side. Wrapped up in his sublime office, he saw not the
danger, but still persisted in his prayers. Even then, when the last
enemy was racing up the fiery stairs to seize her, even at that moment
did this noblest of girls think only for _him_, the one friend that
would not forsake her, and not for herself; bidding him with her last
breath to care for his own preservation, but to leave _her_ to God.
That girl, whose latest breath ascended in this sublime expression of
self-oblivion, did not utter the word _recant_ either with her lips or
in her heart. No; she did not, though one should rise from the dead to
swear it.
* * * * *
Bishop of Beauvais! thy victim died in fire upon a scaffold--thou upon
a down bed. But, for the departing minutes of life, both are oftentimes
alike. At the farewell crisis, when the gates of death are opening, and
flesh is resting from its struggles, oftentimes the tortured and the
torturer have the same truce from carnal torment; both sink together
into sleep; together both sometimes kindle into dreams. When the mortal
mists were gathering fast upon you two, bishop and shepherd girl--when
the pavilions of life were closing up their shadowy curtains about you
--let us try, through the gigantic glooms, to decipher the flying
features of your separate visions.
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