"You promise it?" said Denise. "The saving of your soul is what we
seek. Besides, you would not have all Limoges and the village say that
a Tascheron knows not how to die a noble death? And then, too, think
that all you lose here you will regain in heaven, where pardoned souls
will meet again."

This superhuman effort parched the throat of the heroic girl. She was
silent after this, like her mother, but she had triumphed. The
criminal, furious at seeing his happiness torn from him by the law,
now quivered at the sublime Catholic truth so simply expressed by his
sister. All women, even young peasant-women like Denise, know how to
touch these delicate chords; for does not every woman seek to make
love eternal? Denise had touched two chords, each most sensitive.
Awakened pride called on the other virtues chilled by misery and
hardened by despair. Jean took his sister's hand and kissed it, and
laid it on his heart in a deeply significant manner; he applied it
both gently and forcibly.

"Yes," he said, "I must renounce all; this is the last beating of my
heart, its last thought. Keep them, Denise."

And he gave her one of those glances by which a man in crucial moments
tries to put his soul into the soul of another human being.

This thought, this word, was, in truth, a last testament, an unspoken
legacy, to be as faithfully transmitted as it was trustfully given. It
was so fully understood by mother, sister, and priest, that they all
with one accord turned their faces from each other, to hide their
tears and keep the secret of their thoughts in their own breasts.