If our husbands, and our brothers, and our dear friends, Cathelineau, are brave and noble, we will endeavour to imitate them; as long as there is an abiding-place for them in the country, there are duties for us.

If God vouchsafed to spare you your life a while, that you might live to be the instrument of restoring His worship, do you think that I would run from your bedside, because I heard that the rebels were near you?
Oh, Cathelineau! you do not know the passive courage of a woman's heart." Cathelineau listened to her with all his ears, and gazed on her with all his eyes, as she spoke to him.

It seemed to him as though another world had opened to his view even before his death; as though paradise could give him no holier bliss than to gaze on that face, and to listen to that voice.
"I never knew what a woman was till now," said he; "and how much better is it that I should die this moment, with your image before me, than return to a world, such as mine has been, where all henceforward would be distasteful to me." "Should you live, Cathelineau, you would live to be honoured and valued.
If it be God's pleasure that you should die, your memory will be honoured--and loved," said Agatha.
He did not answer her for a while, but lay still, with his eyes fixed upon her, as she sat with her elbow leaning on the window.

Oh! what an unspeakable joy it was to him to hear such heavenly words spoken by her, whom he had almost worshipped; and yet her presence and her words turned his thoughts back from heaven to the earth which he had all but left.
Could she really have loved him had it been his lot to survive these wars?
Could she really have descended from her high pinnacle of state and fortune to bless so lowly a creature as him with her beauty and her excellence?
As these thoughts passed through his brain, he began for the first time to long for life, to think that the promised blessings of heaven hardly compensated for those which he was forced to leave on earth; but his mind was under too strong control to be allowed to wander long upon such reflections.

He soon recovered his wayward thoughts, and remembered that his one remaining earthly duty was to die.
"It is God's will that I should die," said he at last, "and I feel that He will soon release me from all worldly cares and sufferings; but you, Mademoiselle, have made the last moments of my life happy," and again he was silent for a minute or two, while he strove to find both courage and words to express that which he wished to say.