A month after the decision of the Tribunal was confirmed in the
Court-Royal, Chesnel died, exhausted by the dreadful strain, which had
weakened and shaken him mentally and physically. He died in the hour
of victory, like some old faithful hound that has brought the boar to
bay, and gets his death on the tusks. He died as happily as might be,
seeing that he left the great House all but ruined, and the heir in
penury, bored to death by an idle life, and without a hope of
establishing himself. That bitter thought and his own exhaustion, no
doubt, hastened the old man's end. One great comfort came to him as he
lay amid the wreck of so many hopes, sinking under the burden of so
many cares--the old Marquis, at his sister's entreaty, gave him back
all the old friendship. The great lord came to the little house in the
Rue du Bercail, and sat by his old servant's bedside, all unaware how
much that servant had done and sacrificed for him. Chesnel sat
upright, and repeated Simeon's cry.--The Marquis allowed them to bury
Chesnel in the castle chapel; they laid him crosswise at the foot of
the tomb which was waiting for the Marquis himself, the last, in a
sense, of the d'Esgrignons.
And so died one of the last representatives of that great and
beautiful thing, Service; giving to that often discredited word its
original meaning, the relation between feudal lord and servitor.
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