Pendarves continued to resist the repeated importunities of La Beauvais to visit her; but at length she sent a friend to tell him she was dying, and trusted he would not refuse to bid her farewell.--Pendarves could not, dared not refuse to answer this appeal to his feelings, and he repaired to her hotel; in which, though he knew it not, she was maintained by one of the new Members of the Convention, whom she had inveigled to marry her according to the laws of the republic. When he arrived, he found her scarcely indisposed; and reproaching her severely with her treachery, he told her that all her artifices were vain; that his heart had always been his wife's though circumstances had enabled her to lure him from me; that now I had shone upon him in the moments of danger more brightly than ever; and that he conjured her to forget a guilty man, who, though never likely perhaps to be happy again with the woman he adored, yet still preferred his present solitary but guiltless situation to all the intoxicating hours which he had passed with _her_. La Beauvais, who really loved him, was overcome with this solemn renunciation, and fell back in a sort of hysterical affection on the couch; and while he held her hand, and was bathing her temples with essences, her husband rushed in, and exclaiming, "Villain, defend yourself!" he gave a pistol into the hand of Pendarves; then firing himself, the ball took effect; and while De Walden was waiting his return at his lodgings to give him my letter of recall and of forgiving love, he was carried thither a bleeding and a dying man! But he was conscious; and while Juan, who called by accident, remained with him, De Walden came to break the dread event to me, and bear me to the couch of the sufferer. He was holding my letter to his heart. "It has healed every wound there," said he, "except those by conscience made; and it shall lie there till all is over." Silent, stunned, I threw myself beside him, and joined my cold cheek to his. "O Helen! and is it thus we meet? Is _this_ our re-union?" "Live! do but live," cried I, in a burst of salutary tears; "and you shall find how dearly I love you still; and we shall be so happy!--happier than ever!" He shook his head mournfully, and said he did not deserve to live, and to be so happy; and he humbly bowed to that chastising hand which, when he had escaped punishment for real errors, made him fall the victim of an imaginary one. The surgeons now came to examine the wound a second time, and confirmed their previous sentence, that the wound was mortal; on which he desired to be left alone with me, and I was able to suppress my feelings that I might sooth his during this overwhelming interview.