She showed him the letter which Sauvresy had forcibly taken from Jenny, and he recognized it well.
"It is a fatality," said he, overwhelmed. "But we can separate and break off with each other. Bertha, I can go away."
"It's too late. Believe me, Hector, we are to-day defending our lives. Ah, you don't know Clement! You don't know what the fury of a man like him can be, when he sees that his confidence has been outrageously abused, and his trust vilely betrayed. If he has said nothing to me, and has not let us see any traces of his implacable anger, it is because he is meditating some frightful vengeance."
This was only too probable, and Hector saw it clearly.
"What shall we do?" he asked, in a hoarse voice; he was almost speechless.
"Find out what change he has made in his will."
"But how?"
"I don't know yet. I came to ask your advice, and I find you more cowardly than a woman. Let me act, then; don't do anything yourself; I will do all."
He essayed an objection.
"Enough," said she. "He must not ruin us after all—I will see—I will think."
Someone below called her. She went down, leaving Hector overcome with despair.
That evening, during which Bertha seemed happy and smiling, his face finally betrayed so distinctly the traces of his anguish, that Sauvresy tenderly asked him if he were not ill?
"You exhaust yourself tending on me, my good Hector," said he. "How canI ever repay your devotion?"
Tremorel had not the strength to reply.
"And that man knows all," thought he. "What courage! What fate can he be reserving for us?"
The scene which was passing before Hector's eyes made his flesh creep. Every time that Bertha gave her husband his medicine, she took a hair-pin from her tresses, and plunged it into the little vial which she had shown him, taking up thus some small, white grains, which she dissolved in the potions prescribed by the doctor.
It might be supposed that Tremorel, enslaved by his horrid position, and harassed by increasing terror, would renounce forever his proposed marriage with Laurence. Not so. He clung to that project more desperately than ever. Bertha's threats, the great obstacles now intervening, his anguish, crime, only augmented the violence of his love for her, and fed the flame of his ambition to secure her as his wife. A small and flickering ray of hope which lighted the darkness of his despair, consoled and revived him, and made the present more easy to bear. He said to himself that Bertha could not be thinking of marrying him the day after her husband's death. Months, a whole year must pass, and thus he would gain time; then some day he would declare his will. What would she have to say? Would she divulge the crime, and try to hold him as her accomplice? Who would believe her? How could she prove that he, who loved and had married another woman, had any interest in Sauvresy's death? People don't kill their friends for the mere pleasure of it. Would she provoke the law to exhume her husband? She was now in a position, thought he, wherein she could, or would not exercise her reason. Later on, she would reflect, and then she would be arrested by the probability of those dangers, the certainty of which did not now terrify her.
He did not wish that she should ever be his wife at any price. He would have detested her had she possessed millions; he hated her now that she was poor, ruined, reduced to her own narrow means. And that she was so, there was no doubt, Sauvresy indeed knew all. He was content to wait; he knew that Laurence loved him enough to wait for him one, or three years, if necessary. He already had such absolute power over her, that she did not try to combat the thoughts of him, which gently forced themselves on her, penetrated to her soul, and filled her mind and heart. Hector said to himself that in the interest of his designs, perhaps it was well that Bertha was acting as she did. He forced himself to stifle his conscience in trying to prove that he was not guilty. Who thought of this crime? Bertha. Who was executing it? She alone. He could only be reproached with moral complicity in it, a complicity involuntary, forced upon him, imposed somehow by the care for his own life. Sometimes, however, a bitter remorse seized him. He could have understood a sudden, violent, rapid murder; could have explained to himself a knife-stroke; but this slow death, given drop by drop, horribly sweetened by tenderness, veiled under kisses, appeared to him unspeakably hideous. He was mortally afraid of Bertha, as of a reptile, and when she embraced him he shuddered from head to foot.
She was so calm, so engaging, so natural; her voice had the same soft and caressing tones, that he could not forget it. She plunged her hair-pin into the fatal vial without ceasing her conversation, and he did not surprise her in any shrinking or shuddering, nor even a trembling of the eyelids. She must have been made of brass. Yet he thought that she was not cautious enough; and that she put herself in danger of discovery; and he told her of these fears, and how she made him tremble every moment.
"Have confidence in me," she answered. "I want to succeed—I am prudent."
"But you may be suspected."
"By whom?"
"Eh! How do I know? Everyone—the servants, the doctor."
"No danger. And suppose they did suspect?"
"They would make examinations, Bertha; they would make a minute scrutiny."
She gave a smile of the most perfect security.
"They might examine and experiment as much as they pleased, they would find nothing. Do you think I am such a fool as to use arsenic?"
"For Heaven's sake, hush!"
"I have procured one of those poisons which are as yet unknown, and which defy all analysis; one of which many doctors—and learned ones, too—could not even tell the symptoms!"
"But where did you get this—this—"
He dared not say, "poison."
"Who gave you that?" resumed he.
"What matters it? I have taken care that he who gave it to me should run the same danger as myself, and he knows it. There's nothing to fear from that quarter. I've paid him enough to smother all his regrets."
An objection came to his lips; he wanted to say, "It's too slow;" but he had not the courage, though she read his thought in his eyes.
"It is slow, because that suits me," said she. "Before all, I must know about the will—and that I am trying to find out."
She occupied herself constantly about this will, and during the long hours that she passed at Sauvresy's bedside, she gradually, with the greatest craft and delicacy, led her husband's mind in the direction of his last testament, with such success that he himself mentioned the subject which so absorbed Bertha.
He said that he did not comprehend why people did not always have their worldly affairs in order, and their wishes fully written down, in case of accident. What difference did it make whether one were ill or well? At these words Bertha attempted to stop him. Such ideas, she said, pained her too much. She even shed real tears, which fell down her cheeks and made her more beautiful and irresistible than before; real tears which moistened her handkerchief.
"You dear silly creature," said Sauvresy, "do you think that makes one die?"
"No; but I do not wish it."
"But, dear, have we been any the less happy because, on the day after our marriage, I made a will bequeathing you all my fortune? And, stop; you have a copy of it, haven't you? If you were kind, you would go and fetch it for me."
She became very red, then very pale. Why did he ask for this copy? Did he want to tear it up? A sudden thought reassured her; people do not tear up a document which can be cancelled by a scratch of the pen on another sheet of paper. Still, she hesitated a moment.
"I don't know where it can be."
"But I do. It is in the left-hand drawer of the glass cupboard; come, please me by getting it."
While she was gone, Sauvresy said to Hector:
"Poor girl! Poor dear Bertha! If I died, she never would survive me!"
Tremorel thought of nothing to reply; his anxiety was intense and visible.
"And this man," thought he, "suspects something! No; it is not possible."
Bertha returned.
"I have found it," said she.
"Give it to me."
He took the copy of his will, and read it with evident satisfaction, nodding his head at certain passages in which he referred to his love for his wife. When he had finished reading, he said:
"Now give me a pen and some ink."
Hector and Bertha reminded him that it would fatigue him to write; but he insisted. The two guilty ones, seated at the foot of the bed and out of Sauvresy's sight, exchanged looks of alarm. What was he going to write? But he speedily finished it.
"Take this," said he to Tremorel, "and read aloud what I have just added."
Hector complied with his friend's request, with trembling voice:
"This day, being sound in mind, though much suffering, I declare that I do not wish to change a line of this will. Never have I loved my wife more—never have I so much desired to leave her the heiress of all I possess, should I die before her.
Mistress of herself as Bertha was, she succeeded in concealing the unspeakable satisfaction with which she was filled. All her wishes were accomplished, and yet she was able to veil her delight under an apparent sadness.
"Of what good is this?" said she, with a sigh.
She said this, but half an hour afterward, when she was alone withHector, she gave herself up to the extravagance of her delight.
"Nothing more to fear," exclaimed she. "Nothing! Now we shall have liberty, fortune, love, pleasure, life! Why, Hector, we shall have at least three millions; you see, I've got this will myself, and I shall keep it. No more agents or notaries shall be admitted into this house henceforth. Now I must hasten!"
The count certainly felt a satisfaction in knowing her to be rich, for he could much more easily get rid of a millionnaire widow than of a poor penniless woman. Sauvresy's conduct thus calmed many sharp anxieties. Her restless gayety, however, her confident security, seemed monstrous to Hector. He would have wished for more solemnity in the execution of the crime; he thought that he ought at least to calm Bertha's delirium.
"You will think more than once of Sauvresy," said he, in a graver tone.
She answered with a "prrr," and added vivaciously:
"Of him? when and why? Oh, his memory will not weigh on me very heavily. I trust that we shall be able to live still at Valfeuillu, for the place pleases me; but we must also have a house at Paris—or we will buy yours back again. What happiness, Hector!"
The mere prospect of this anticipated felicity so shocked Hector, that his better self for the moment got the mastery; he essayed to move Bertha.
"For the last time," said he, "I implore you to renounce this terrible, dangerous project. You see that you were mistaken—that Sauvresy suspects nothing, but loves you as well as ever."
The expression of Bertha's face suddenly changed; she sat quite still, in a pensive revery.
"Don't let's talk any more of that," said she, at last. "Perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps he only had doubts—perhaps, although he has discovered something, he hopes to win me back by his goodness. But you see—"
She stopped. Doubtless she did not wish to alarm him.
He was already much alarmed. The next day he went off to Melun without a word; being unable to bear the sight of this agony, and fearing to betray himself. But he left his address, and when she sent word that Sauvresy was always crying out for him, he hastily returned. Her letter was most imprudent and absurd, and made his hair stand on end. He had intended, on his arrival, to reproach her; but it was she who upbraided him.
"Why this flight?"
"I could not stay here—I suffered, trembled, felt as if I were dying."
"What a coward you are!"
He would have replied, but she put her finger on his mouth, and pointed with her other hand to the door of the next room.
"Sh! Three doctors have been in consultation there for the past hour, and I haven't been able to hear a word of what they said. Who knows what they are about? I shall not be easy till they go away."
Bertha's fears were not without foundation. When Sauvresy had his last relapse, and complained of a severe neuralgia in the face and an irresistible craving for pepper, Dr. R—- had uttered a significant exclamation. It was nothing, perhaps—yet Bertha had heard it, and she thought she surprised a sudden suspicion on the doctor's part; and this now disturbed her, for she thought that it might be the subject of the consultation. The suspicion, however, if there had ever been any, quickly vanished. The symptoms entirely changed twelve hours later, and the next day the sick man felt pains quite the opposite of those which had previously distressed him. This very inconstancy of the distemper served to puzzle the doctor's conclusions. Sauvresy, in these latter days, had scarcely suffered at all, he said, and had slept well at night; but he had, at times, strange and often distressing sensations. He was evidently failing hourly; he was dying—everyone perceived it. And now Dr. R—- asked for a consultation, the result of which had not been reached when Tremorel returned.
The drawing-room door at last swung open, and the calm faces of the physicians reassured the poisoner. Their conclusions were that the case was hopeless; everything had been tried and exhausted; no human resources had been neglected; the only hope was in Sauvresy's strong constitution.
Bertha, colder than marble, motionless, her eyes full of tears, seemed so full of grief on hearing this cruel decision, that all the doctors were touched.
"Is there no hope then? Oh, my God!" cried she, in agonizing tones.
Dr. R—- hardly dared to attempt to comfort her; he answered her questions evasively.
"We must never despair," said he, "when the invalid is of Sauvresy's age and constitution; nature often works miracles when least expected."
The doctor, however, lost no time in taking Hector apart and begging him to prepare the poor, devoted, loving young lady for the terrible blow about to ensue.
"For you see," added he, "I don't think Monsieur Sauvresy can live more than two days!"
Bertha, with her ear at the keyhole, had heard the doctor's prediction; and when Hector returned from conducting the physician to the door, he found her radiant. She rushed into his arms.
"Now" cried she, "the future truly belongs to us. Only one black point obscured our horizon, and it has cleared away. It is for me to realize Doctor R—- 's prediction." They dined together, as usual, in the dining-room, while one of the chambermaids remained beside the sick-bed. Bertha was full of spirits which she could scarcely control. The certainty of success and safety, the assurance of reaching the end, made her imprudently gay. She spoke aloud, even in the presence of the servants, of her approaching liberty. During the evening she was more reckless than ever. If any of the servants should have a suspicion, or a shadow of one she might be discovered and lost. Hector constantly nudged her under the table and frowned at her, to keep her quiet; he felt his blood run cold at her conduct; all in vain. There are times when the armor of hypocrisy becomes so burdensome that one is forced, cost what it may, to throw it off if only for an instant.
While Hector was smoking his cigar, Bertha was more freely pursuing her dream. She was thinking that she could spend the period of her mourning at Valfeuillu, and Hector, for the sake of appearances, would hire a pretty little house somewhere in the suburbs. The worst of it all was that she would be forced to seem to mourn for Sauvresy, as she had pretended to love him during his lifetime. But at last a day would come when, without scandal, she might throw off her mourning clothes, and then they would get married. Where? At Paris or Orcival?
Hector's thoughts ran in the same channel. He, too, wished to see his friend under the ground to end his own terrors, and to submit to Bertha's terrible yoke.
Time passed. Hector and Bertha repaired to Sauvresy's room; he was asleep. They noiselessly took chairs beside the fire, as usual, and the maid retired. In order that the sick man might not be disturbed by the light of the lamp, curtains had been hung so that, when lying down, he could not see the fireplace and mantel. In order to see these, he must have raised himself on his pillow and leaned forward on his right arm. But now he was asleep, breathing painfully, feverish, and shuddering convulsively. Bertha and Hector did not speak; the solemn and sinister silence was only broken by the ticking of the clock, or by the leaves of the book which Hector was reading. Ten o'clock struck; soon after Sauvresy moved, turned over, and awoke. Bertha was at his side in an instant; she saw that his eyes were open.
"Do you feel a little better, dear Clement?" she asked.
"Neither better nor worse."
"Do you want anything?"
"I am thirsty."
Hector, who had raised his eyes when his friend spoke, suddenly resumed his reading.
Bertha, standing by the mantel, began to prepare with great care Dr. R—- 's last prescription; when it was ready, she took out the fatal little vial as usual, and thrust one of her hair-pins into it.
She had not time to draw it out before she felt a light touch upon her shoulder. A shudder shook her from head to foot; she suddenly turned and uttered a loud scream, a cry of terror and horror.
"Oh!"
The hand which had touched her was her husband's. While she was busied with the poison at the mantel, Sauvresy had softly raised himself; more softly still, he had pulled the curtain aside, and had stretched out his arm and touched her. His eyes glittered with hate and anger.
Bertha's cry was answered by another dull cry, or rather groan; Tremorel had seen and comprehended all; he was overwhelmed.
"All is discovered!" Their eyes spoke these three words to each other. They saw them everywhere, written in letters of fire. There was a moment of stupor, of silence so profound that Hector heard his temples beat. Sauvresy had got back under the bed-clothes again. He laughed loudly, wildly, just as a skeleton might have laughed whose jaws and teeth rattled together.
But Bertha was not one of those persons who are overcome by a single blow, terrible as it might be. She trembled like a leaf; her legs staggered; but her mind was already at work seeking a subterfuge. What had Sauvresy seen—anything? What did he know? For even had he seen the vial, this might be explained. It could only have been by simple chance that he had touched her at the moment when she was using the poison. All these thoughts flashed across her mind in a moment, as rapid as lightning shooting between the clouds. And then she dared to approach the bed, and, with a frightfully constrained smile, to say:
"How you frightened me then!"
He looked at her a moment, which seemed to her an age—and simply replied:
"I understand it."
There was no longer any uncertainty. Bertha saw only too well in her husband's eyes that he knew something. But what—how much? She nerved herself to go on:
"Are you still suffering?"
"No."
"Then why did you get up?"
He raised himself upon his pillow, and with a sudden strength, he continued:
"I got up to tell you that I have had enough of these tortures, that I have reached the limits of human energy, that I cannot endure one day longer the agony of seeing myself put to death slowly, drop by drop, by the hands of my wife and my best friend!"
He stopped. Hector and Bertha were thunderstruck. "I wanted to tell youalso, that I have had enough of your cruel caution, and that I suffer.Ah, don't you see that I suffer horribly? Hurry, cut short my agony!Kill me, and kill me at a blow—poisoners!"
At the last word, the Count de Tremorel sprang up as if he had moved by a spring, his eyes haggard, his arms stretched out. Sauvresy, seeing this, quickly slipped his hand under the pillow, pulled out a revolver, and pointed the barrel at Hector, crying out:
"Don't advance a step!"
He thought that Tremorel, seeing that they were discovered, was going to rush upon him and strangle him; but he was mistaken. It seemed to Hector as though he were losing his mind. He fell down as heavily as if he were a log. Bertha was more self-possessed; she tried to resist the torpor of terror which she felt coming on.
"You are worse, my Clement," said she. "This is that dreadful fever which frightens me so. Delirium—"
"Have I really been delirious?" interrupted he, with a surprised air.
"Alas, yes, dear, that is what haunts you, and fills your poor sick head with horrid visions."
He looked at her curiously. He was really stupefied by this boldness, which constantly grew more bold.
"What! you think that we, who are so dear to you, your friends, I, your—"
Her husband's implacable look forced her to stop, and the words expired on her lips.
"Enough of these lies, Bertha," resumed Sauvresy, "they are useless. No, I have not been dreaming, nor have I been delirious. The poison is only too real, and I could tell you what it is without your taking it out of your pocket."
She recoiled as if she had seen her husband's hand stretched out to snatch the blue vial.
"I guessed it and recognized it at the very first; for you have chosen one of those poisons which, it is true, leave scarcely any trace of themselves, but the symptoms of which are not deceptive. Do you remember the day when I complained of a morbid taste for pepper? The next day I was certain of it, and I was not the only one. Doctor R—-, too, had a suspicion."
Bertha tried to stammer something; her husband interrupted her.
"People ought to try their poisons," pursued he, in an ironical tone, "before they use them. Didn't you understand yours, or what its effects were? Why, your poison gives intolerable neuralgia, sleeplessness, and you saw me without surprise, sleeping soundly all night long! I complained of a devouring fire within me, while your poison freezes the blood and the entrails, and yet you are not astonished. You see all the symptoms change and disappear, and that does not enlighten you. You are fools, then. Now see what I had to do to divert Doctor R—- 's suspicions. I hid the real pains which your poison caused, and complained of imaginary, ridiculous ones. I described sensations just the opposite of those which I felt. You were lost, then—and I saved you."
Bertha's malignant energy staggered beneath so many successive blows. She wondered whether she were not going mad; had she heard aright? Was it really true that her husband had perceived that he was being poisoned, and yet said nothing; nay, that he had even deceived the doctor? Why? What was his purpose?
Sauvresy paused several minutes, and then went on:
"I have held my tongue and so saved you, because the sacrifice of my life had already been made. Yes, I had been fatally wounded in the heart on the day that I learned that you were faithless to me."
He spoke of his death without apparent emotion; but at the words, "You were faithless to me," his voice faltered and trembled.
"I would not, could not believe it at first. I doubted the evidence of my senses, rather than doubt you. But I was forced to believe at last. I was no longer anything in my house but a laughing-stock. But I was in your way. You and your lover needed more room and liberty. You were tired of constraint and hypocrisy. Then it was that, believing that my death would make you free and rich, you brought in poison to rid yourselves of me."
Bertha had at least the heroism of crime. All was discovered; well, she threw down the mask. She tried to defend her accomplice, who lay unconscious in a chair.
"It is I that have done it all," cried she. "He is innocent."
Sauvresy turned pale with rage.
"Ah, really," said he, "my friend Hector is innocent! It wasn't he, then, who, to pay me up—not for his life, for he was too cowardly to kill himself; but for his honor, which he owes to me—took my wife from me? Wretch! I hold out my hand to him when he is drowning, I welcome him like a brother, and in return, he desolates my hearth!… And you knew what you were doing, my friend Hector—for I told you a hundred times that my wife was my all here below, my present and my future, my dream and happiness and hope and very life! You knew that for me to lose her was to die. But if you had loved her—no, it was not that you loved her; you hated me. Envy devoured you, and you could not tell me to my face, 'You are too happy.' Then, like a coward, you dishonored me in the dark. Bertha was only the instrument of your rancor; and she weighs upon you to-day—you despise and fear her. My friend, Hector, you have been in this house the vile lackey who thinks to avenge his baseness by spitting upon the meats which he puts on his master's table!"
The count only responded by a shudder. The dying man's terrible words fell more cruelly on his conscience than blows upon his cheek.
"See, Bertha," continued Sauvresy, "that's the man whom you have preferred to me, and for whom you have betrayed me. You never loved me—I see it now—your heart was never Mine. And I—I loved you so! From the day I first saw you, you were my only thought; as if your heart had beaten in place of Mine. Everything about you was dear and precious to me; I adored your whims, caprices, even your faults. There was nothing I would not do for a smile from you, so that you would say to me, Thank you, between two kisses. You don't know that for years after our marriage it was my delight to wake up first so as to gaze upon you as you lay asleep, to admire and touch your lovely hair, lying dishevelled across the pillow. Bertha!"
He softened at the remembrance of these past joys, which would not come again. He forgot their presence, the infamous treachery, the poison; that he was about to die, murdered by this beloved wife; and his eyes filled with tears, his voice choked.
Bertha, more motionless and pallid than marble, listened to him breathlessly.
"It is true, then," continued the sick man, "that these lovely eyes conceal a soul of filth! Ah, who would not have been deceived, as I was? Bertha, what did you dream of when you were sleeping in my arms? Tremorel came, and you thought you saw in him the ideal of your dreams. You admired the precocious wrinkles which betrayed an exhausted life, like the fatal seal which marks the fallen archangel's forehead. Your love, without thought of mine, rushed toward him, though he did not think of you. You went to evil as if it were your nature. And yet I thought you more immaculate than the Alpine snows. You did not even have a struggle with yourself; you betrayed no confusion which would reveal your first fault to me. You brought me your forehead soiled with his kisses without blushing."
Weariness overcame his energies; his voice became little by little feebler and less distinct.
"You had your happiness in your hands, Bertha, and you carelessly destroyed it, as the child breaks the toy of whose value he is ignorant. What did you expect from this wretch for whom you had the frightful courage to kill me, with a kiss upon your lips, slowly, hour by hour? You thought you loved him, but disgust ought to have come at last. Look at him, and judge between us. See which is the—man—I, extended on this bed where I shall soon die, or he shivering there in a corner. You have the energy of crime, but he has only the baseness of it. Ah, if my name was Hector de Tremorel, and a man had spoken as I have just done, that man should live no longer, even if he had ten revolvers like this I am holding to defend himself with!"
Hector, thus taunted, tried to get up and reply; but his legs would not support him, and his throat only gave hoarse, unintelligible sounds. Bertha, as she looked at the two men, recognized her error with rage and indignation. Her husband, at this moment, seemed to her sublime; his eyes gleamed, his face was radiant; while the other—the other! She felt sick with disgust when she but glanced toward him.
Thus all these deceptive chimeras after which she had run, love, passion, poetry, were already hers; she had held them in her hands and she had not been able to perceive it. But what was Sauvresy's purpose?
He continued, painfully:
"This then, is our situation; you have killed me, you are going to be free, yet you hate and despise each other—"
He stopped, and seemed to be suffocating; he tried to raise himself on his pillow and to sit up in bed, but found himself too feeble.
"Bertha," said he, "help me get up."
She leaned over the bed, and taking her husband in her arms, succeeded in placing him as he wished. He appeared more at ease in his new position, and took two or three long breaths.
"Now," he said, "I should like something to drink. The doctor lets me take a little old wine, if I have a fancy for it; give me some."
She hastened to bring him a glass of wine, which he emptied and handed back to her.
"There wasn't any poison in it, was there?" he asked.
This ghastly question and the smile which accompanied it, melted Bertha's callousness; remorse had already taken possession of her, as her disgust of Tremorel increased.
"Poison?" she cried, eagerly, "never!"
"You must give me some, though, presently, so as to help me to die."
"You die, Clement? No; I want you to live, so that I may redeem the past. I am a wretch, and have committed a hideous crime—but you are good. You will live; I don't ask to be your wife, but only your servant. I will love you, humiliate myself, serve you on my knees, so that some day, after ten, twenty years of expiation, you will forgive me!"
Hector in his mortal terror and anguish, was scarcely able to distinguish what was taking place. But he saw a dim ray of hope in Bertha's gestures and accent, and especially in her last words; he thought that perhaps it was all going to end and be forgotten, and that Sauvresy would pardon them. Half-rising, he stammered:
"Yes, forgive us, forgive us!"
Sauvresy's eyes glittered, and his angry voice vibrated as if it came from a throat of metal.
"Forgive!" cried he, "pardon! Did you have pity on me during all this year that you have been playing with my happiness, during this fortnight that you have been mixing poison in all my potions? Pardon? What, are you fools? Why do you think I held my tongue, when I discovered your infamy, and let myself be poisoned, and threw the doctors off the scent? Do you really hope that I did this to prepare a scene of heartrending farewells, and to give you my benediction at the end? Ah, know me better!"
Bertha was sobbing; she tried to take her husband's hand, but he rudely repulsed her.
"Enough of these falsehoods," said he. "Enough of these perfidies. I hate you! You don't seem to perceive that hate is all that is still living in me."
Sauvresy's expression was at this moment ferocious. "It is almost two months since I learned the truth; it broke me up, soul and body. Ah, it cost me a good deal to keep quiet—it almost killed me. But one thought sustained me; I longed to avenge myself. My mind was always bent on that; I searched for a punishment as great as this crime; I found none, could find none. Then you resolved to poison me. Mark this—that the very day when I guessed about the poison I had a thrill of joy, for I had discovered my vengeance!"
A constantly increasing terror possessed Bertha, and now stupefied her, as well as Tremorel.
"Why do you wish for my death? To be free and marry each other? Very well; I wish that also. The Count de Tremorel will be Madame Sauvresy's second husband."
"Never!" cried Bertha. "No, never!"
"Never!" echoed Hector.
"It shall be so; nevertheless because I wish it. Oh, my precautions have been well taken, and you can't escape me. Now hear me. When I became certain that I was being poisoned, I began to write a minute history of all three of us; I did more—I have kept a journal day by day and hour by hour, narrating all the particulars of my illness; then I kept some of the poison which you gave me—"
Bertha made a gesture of denial. Sauvresy proceeded:
"Certainly, I kept it, and I will tell you how. Every time that Bertha gave me a suspicious potion, I kept a portion of it in my mouth, and carefully ejected it into a bottle which I kept hid under the bolster. Ah, you ask how I could have done all this without your suspecting it, or without being seen by any of the servants. Know that hate is stronger than love, be sure that I have left nothing to chance, nor have I forgotten anything."
Hector and Bertha looked at Sauvresy with a dull, fixed gaze. They forced themselves to understand him, but could scarcely do so.
"Let's finish," resumed the dying man, "my strength is waning. This very morning, the bottle containing the poison I have preserved, our biographies, and the narrative of my poisoning, have been put in the hands of a trustworthy and devoted person, whom, even if you knew him, you could not corrupt. He does not know the contents of what has been confided to him. The day that you get married this friend will give them all up to you. If, however, you are not married in a year from to-day, he has instructions to put these papers and this bottle into the hands of the officers of the law."
A double cry of horror and anguish told Sauvresy that he had well chosen his vengeance.
"And reflect," added he, "that this package once delivered up to justice, means the galleys, if not the scaffold for both of you."
Sauvresy had overtasked his strength. He fell panting upon the bed, his mouth open, his eyes filmy, and his features so distorted that he seemed to be on the point of death. But neither Bertha nor Tremorel thought of trying to relieve him. They remained opposite each other with dilated eyes, stupefied, as if their thoughts were bent upon the torments of that future which the implacable vengeance of the man whom they had outraged imposed upon them. They were indissolubly united, confounded in a common destiny; nothing could separate them but death. A chain stronger and harder than that of the galley-slave bound them together; a chain of infamies and crimes, of which the first link was a kiss, and the last a murder by poison. Now Sauvresy might die; his vengeance was on their heads, casting a cloud upon their sun. Free in appearance, they would go through life crushed by the burden of the past, more slaves than the blacks in the American rice-fields. Separated by mutual hate and contempt, they saw themselves riveted together by the common terror of punishment, condemned to an eternal embrace.
Bertha at this moment admired her husband. Now that he was so feeble that he breathed as painfully as an infant, she looked upon him as something superhuman. She had had no idea of such constancy and courage allied with so much dissimulation and genius. How cunningly he had found them out! How well he had known how to avenge himself! To be the master, he had only to will it. In a certain way she rejoiced in the strange atrocity of this scene; she felt something like a bitter pride in being one of the actors in it. At the same time she was transported with rage and sorrow in thinking that she had had this man in her power, that he had been at her feet. She almost loved him. Of all men, it was he whom she would have chosen were she mistress of her destinies; and he was going to escape her.
Tremorel, while these strange ideas crowded upon Bertha's mind, began to come to himself. The certainty that Laurence was now forever lost for him occurred to him, and his despair was without bounds. The silence continued a full quarter of an hour. Sauvresy at last subdued the spasm which had exhausted him, and spoke.
"I have not said all yet," he commenced.
His voice was as feeble as a murmur, and yet it seemed terrible to his hearers.
"You shall see whether I have reckoned and foreseen well. Perhaps, when I was dead, the idea of flying and going abroad would strike you. I shall not permit that. You must stay at Orcival—at Valfeuillu. A—friend—not he with the package—is charged, without knowing the reason for it, with the task of watching you. Mark well what I say—if either of you should disappear for eight days, on the ninth, the man who has the package would receive a letter which would cause him to resort at once to the police."
Yes, he had foreseen all, and Tremorel, who had already thought of flight, was overwhelmed.
"I have so arranged, besides, that the idea of flight shall not tempt you too much. It is true I have left all my fortune to Bertha, but I only give her the use of it; the property itself will not be hers until the day after your marriage."
Bertha made a gesture of repugnance which her husband misinterpreted.
"You are thinking of the copy of my will which is in your possession. It is a useless one, and I only added to it some valueless words because I wanted to put your suspicions to sleep. My true will is in the notary's hands, and bears a date two days later. I can read you the rough draft of it."
He took a sheet of paper from a portfolio which was concealed; like the revolver, under the bolster, and read:
"Being stricken with a fatal malady, I here set down freely, and in the fulness of my faculties, my last wishes:
"My dearest wish is that my well-beloved widow, Bertha, should espouse, as soon as the delay enjoined by law has expired, my dear friend, the Count Hector de Tremorel. Having appreciated the grandeur of soul and nobleness of sentiment which belong to my wife and friend, I know that they are worthy of each other, and that each will be happy in the other. I die the more peacefully, as I leave my Bertha to a protector whose—"
It was impossible for Bertha to hear more.
"For pity's sake," cried she, "enough."
"Enough? Well, let it be so," responded Sauvresy. "I have read this paper to you to show you that while I have arranged everything to insure the execution of my will; I have also done all that can preserve to you the world's respect. Yes, I wish that you should be esteemed and honored, for it is you alone upon whom I rely for my vengeance. I have knit around you a net-work which you can never burst asunder. You triumph; my tombstone shall be, as you hoped, the altar of your nuptials, or else—the galleys."
Tremorel's pride at last revolted against so many humiliations, so many whip-strokes lashing his face.
"You have only forgotten one thing, Sauvresy; that a man can die."
"Pardon me," replied the sick man, coldly. "I have foreseen that also, and was just going to tell you so. Should one of you die suddenly before the marriage, the police will be called in."
"You misunderstood me; I meant that a man can kill himself."
"You kill yourself? Humph! Jenny, who disdains you almost as much as I do, has told me about your threats to kill yourself. You! See here; here is my revolver; shoot yourself, and I will forgive my wife!"
Hector made a gesture of anger, but did not take the pistol.
"You see," said Sauvresy, "I knew it well. You are afraid." Turning toBertha, he added, "This is your lover."
Extraordinary situations like this are so unwonted and strange that the actors in them almost always remain composed and natural, as if stupefied. Bertha, Hector, and Sauvresy accepted, without taking note of it, the strange position in which they found themselves; and they talked naturally, as if of matters of every-day life, and not of terrible events. But the hours flew, and Sauvresy perceived his life to be ebbing from him.
"There only remains one more act to play," said he. "Hector, go and call the servants, have those who have gone to bed aroused, I want to see them before dying."
Tremorel hesitated.
"Come, go along; or shall I ring, or fire a pistol to bring them here?"
Hector went out; Bertha remained alone with her husband—alone! She had a hope that perhaps she might succeed in making him change his purpose, and that she might obtain his forgiveness. She knelt beside the bed. Never had she been so beautiful, so seductive, so irresistible. The keen emotions of the evening had brought her whole soul into her face, and her lovely eyes supplicated, her breast heaved, her mouth was held out as if for a kiss, and her new-born passion for Sauvresy burst out into delirium.
"Clement," she stammered, in a voice full of tenderness, "my husband,Clement!"
He directed toward her a glance of hatred.
"What do you wish?"
She did not know how to begin—she hesitated, trembled and sobbed.
"Hector would not kill himself," said she, "but I—"
"Well, what do you wish to say? Speak!"
"It was I, a wretch, who have killed you. I will not survive you."
An inexpressible anguish distorted Sauvresy's features. She kill herself! If so, his vengeance was vain; his own death would then appear only ridiculous and absurd. And he knew that Bertha would not be wanting in courage at the critical moment.
She waited, while he reflected.
"You are free," said he, at last, "this would merely be a sacrifice to Hector. If you died, he would marry Laurence Courtois, and in a year would forget even our name."
Bertha sprang to her feet; she pictured Hector to herself married and happy. A triumphant smile, like a sun's ray, brightened Sauvresy's pale face. He had touched the right chord. He might sleep in peace as to his vengeance. Bertha would live. He knew how hateful to each other were these enemies whom he left linked together.
The servants came in one by one; nearly all of them had been long in Sauvresy's service, and they loved him as a good master. They wept and groaned to see him lying there so pale and haggard, with the stamp of death already on his forehead. Sauvresy spoke to them in a feeble voice, which was occasionally interrupted by distressing hiccoughs. He thanked them, he said, for their attachment and fidelity, and wished to apprise them that he had left each of them a goodly sum in his will. Then turning to Bertha and Hector, he resumed:
"You have witnessed, my people, the care and solicitude with which my bedside has been surrounded by this incomparable friend and my adored Bertha. You have seen their devotion. Alas, I know how keen their sorrow will be! But if they wish to soothe my last moments and give me a happy death, they will assent to the prayer which I earnestly make, to them, and will swear to espouse each other after I am gone. Oh, my beloved friends, this seems cruel to you now; but you know not how all human pain is dulled in me. You are young, life has yet much happiness in store for you. I conjure you yield to a dying man's entreaties!"
They approached the bed, and Sauvresy put Bertha's hand into Hector's.
"Do you swear to obey me?" asked he.
They shuddered to hold each other's hands, and seemed near fainting; but they answered, and were heard to murmur:
"We swear it."
The servants retired, grieved at this distressing scene, and Bertha muttered:
"Oh, 'tis infamous, 'tis horrible!"
"Infamous—yes," returned Sauvresy, "but not more so than your caresses, Bertha, or than your hand-pressures, Hector; not more horrible than your plans, than your hopes—"
His voice sank into a rattle. Soon the agony commenced. Horrible convulsions distorted his limbs; twice or thrice he cried out:
"I am cold; I am cold!"
His body was indeed stiff, and nothing could warm it.
Despair filled the house, for a death so sudden was not looked for. The domestics came and went, whispering to each other, "He is going, poor monsieur; poor madame!"
Soon the convulsions ceased. He lay extended on his back, breathing so feebly that twice they thought his breath had ceased forever. At last, a little before ten o'clock, his cheeks suddenly colored and he shuddered. He rose up in bed, his eye staring, his arm stretched out toward the window, and he cried:
"There—behind the curtain—I see them—I see them!"
A last convulsion stretched him again on his pillow.
Clement Sauvresy was dead!
The old justice of the peace ceased reading his voluminous record. His hearers, the detective and the doctor remained silent under the influence of this distressing narrative. M. Plantat had read it impressively, throwing himself into the recital as if he had been personally an actor in the scenes described.
M. Lecoq was the first to recover himself.
"A strange man, Sauvresy," said he.
It was Sauvresy's extraordinary idea of vengeance which struck him in the story. He admired his "good playing" in a drama in which he knew he was going to yield up his life.
"I don't know many people," pursued the detective, "capable of so fearful a firmness. To let himself be poisoned so slowly and gently by his wife! Brrr! It makes a man shiver all over!"
"He knew how to avenge himself," muttered the doctor.
"Yes," answered M. Plantat, "yes, Doctor; he knew how to avenge himself, and more terribly than he supposed, or than you can imagine."
The detective rose from his seat. He had remained motionless, glued to his chair for more than three hours, and his legs were benumbed.
"For my part," said he, "I can very well conceive what an infernal existence the murderers began to suffer the day after their victim's death. You have depicted them, Monsieur Plantat, with the hand of a master. I know them as well after your description as if I had studied them face to face for ten years."
He spoke deliberately, and watched for the effect of what he said in M.Plantat's countenance.
"Where on earth did this old fellow get all these details?" he asked himself. "Did he write this narrative, and if not, who did? How was it, if he had all this information, that he has said nothing?"
M. Plantat appeared to be unconscious of the detective's searching look.
"I know that Sauvresy's body was not cold," said he, "before his murderers began to threaten each other with death."
"Unhappily for them," observed Dr. Gendron, "Sauvresy had foreseen the probability of his widow's using up the rest of the vial of poison."
"Ah, he was shrewd," said M. Lecoq, in a tone of conviction, "very shrewd."
"Bertha could not pardon Hector," continued M. Plantat, "for refusing to take the revolver and blow his brains out; Sauvresy, you see, had foreseen that. Bertha thought that if her lover were dead, her husband would have forgotten all; and it is impossible to tell whether she was mistaken or not."
"And nobody knew anything of this horrible struggle that was going on in the house?"
"No one ever suspected anything."
"It's marvellous!"
"Say, Monsieur Lecoq, that is scarcely credible. Never was dissimulation so crafty, and above all, so wonderfully sustained. If you should question the first person you met in Orcival, he would tell you, as our worthy Courtois this morning told Monsieur Domini, that the count and countess were a model pair and adored each other. Why I, who knew—or suspected, I should say—what had passed, was deceived myself."
Promptly as M. Plantat had corrected himself, his slip of the tongue did not escape M. Lecoq.
"Was it really a slip, or not?" he asked himself.
"These wretches have been terribly punished," pursued M. Plantat, "and it is impossible to pity them; all would have gone rightly if Sauvresy, intoxicated by his hatred, had not committed a blunder which was almost a crime."
"A crime!" exclaimed the doctor.
M. Lecoq smiled and muttered in a low tone:
"Laurence."
But low as he had spoken, M. Plantat heard him.
"Yes, Monsieur Lecoq," said he severely. "Yes, Laurence. Sauvresy did a detestable thing when he thought of making this poor girl the accomplice, or I should say, the instrument of his wrath. He piteously threw her between these two wretches, without asking himself whether she would be broken. It was by using Laurence's name that he persuaded Bertha not to kill herself. Yet he knew of Tremorel's passion for her, he knew her love for him, and he knew that his friend was capable of anything. He, who had so well foreseen all that could serve his vengeance, did not deign to foresee that Laurence might be dishonored; and yet he left her disarmed before this most cowardly and infamous of men!"
The detective reflected.
"There is one thing," said he, "that I can't explain. Why was it that these two, who execrated each other, and whom the implacable will of their victim chained together despite themselves, did not separate of one accord the day after their marriage, when they had fulfilled the condition which had established their crime?"
The old justice of the peace shook his head.
"I see," he answered, "that I have not yet made you understand Bertha's resolute character. Hector would have been delighted with a separation; his wife could not consent to it. Ah, Sauvresy knew her well! She saw her life ruined, a horrible remorse lacerated her; she must have a victim upon whom to expiate her errors and crimes; this victim was Hector. Ravenous for her prey, she would not let him go for anything in the world."
"I' faith," observed Dr. Gendron, "your Tremorel was a chicken-hearted wretch. What had he to fear when Sauvresy's manuscript was once destroyed?"
"Who told you it had been destroyed?" interrupted M. Plantat.
M. Lecoq at this stopped promenading up and down the room, and sat down opposite M. Plantat.
"The whole case lies there," said he. "Whether these proofs have or have not been destroyed."
M. Plantat did not choose to answer directly.
"Do you know," asked he, "to whom Sauvresy confided them for keeping?"
"Ah," cried the detective, as if a sudden idea had enlightened him, "it was you."
He added to himself, "Now, my good man, I begin to see where all your information comes from."
"Yes, it was I," resumed M. Plantat. "On the day of the marriage of Madame Sauvresy and Count Hector, in conformity with the last wishes of my dying friend, I went to Valfeuillu and asked to see Monsieur and Madame de Tremorel. Although they were full of company, they received me at once in the little room on the ground-floor where Sauvresy was murdered. They were both very pale and terribly troubled. They evidently guessed the purpose of my visit, for they lost no time in admitting me to an interview. After saluting them I addressed myself to Bertha, being enjoined to do so by the written instructions I had received; this was another instance of Sauvresy's foresight. 'Madame,' said I, 'I was charged by your late husband to hand to you, on the day of your second marriage, this package, which he confided to my care.' She took the package, in which the bottle and the manuscript were enclosed, with a smiling, even joyous air, thanked me warmly, and went out. The count's expression instantly changed; he appeared very restless and agitated; he seemed to be on coals. I saw well enough that he burned to rush after his wife, but dared not; I was going to retire; but he stopped me. 'Pardon me,' said he, abruptly, 'you will permit me, will you not? I will return immediately,' with which he ran out. When I saw him and his wife a few minutes afterward, they were both very red; their eyes had a strange expression and their voices trembled, as they accompanied me to the door. They had certainly been having a violent altercation."
"The rest may be conjectured," interrupted M. Lecoq. "She had gone to secrete the manuscript in some safe place; and when her new husband asked her to give it up to him, she replied, 'Look for it.'"
"Sauvresy had enjoined on me to give it only into her hands."
"Oh, he knew how to work his revenge. He had it given to his wife so that she might hold a terrible arm against Tremorel, all ready to crush him. If he revolted, she always had this instrument of torture at hand. Ah, the man was a miserable wretch, and she must have made him suffer terribly."
"Yes," said Dr. Gendron, "up to the very day he killed her."
The detective had resumed his promenade up and down the library.
"The question as to the poison," said he, "remains. It is a simple one to resolve, because we've got the man who sold it to her in that closet."
"Besides," returned the doctor, "I can tell something about the poison. This rascal of a Robelot stole it from my laboratory, and I know only too well what it is, even if the symptoms, so well described by our friend Plantat, had not indicated its name to me. I was at work upon aconite when Sauvresy died; and he was poisoned with aconitine."
"Ah, with aconitine," said M. Lecoq, surprised. "It's the first time that I ever met with that poison. Is it a new thing?"
"Not exactly. Medea is said to have extracted her deadliest poisons from aconite, and it was employed in Rome and Greece in criminal executions."
"And I did not know of it! But I have very little time to study.Besides, this poison of Medea's was perhaps lost, as was that of theBorgias; so many of these things are!"
"No, it was not lost, be assured. But we only know of it nowadays by Mathiole's experiments on felons sentenced to death, in the sixteenth century; by Hers, who isolated the active principle, the alkaloid, in 1833 and lastly by certain experiments made by Bouchardat, who pretends—"
Unfortunately, when Dr. Gendron was set agoing on poisons, it was difficult to stop him; but M. Lecoq, on the other hand, never lost sight of the end he had in view.
"Pardon me for interrupting you, Doctor," said he. "But would traces of aconitine be found in a body which had been two years buried? For Monsieur Domini is going to order the exhumation of Sauvresy."
"The tests of aconitine are not sufficiently well known to permit of the isolation of it in a body. Bouchardat tried ioduret of potassium, but his experiment was not successful."
"The deuce!" said M. Lecoq. "That's annoying."
The doctor smiled benignly.
"Reassure yourself," said he. "No such process was in existence—so I invented one."
"Ah," cried Plantat. "Your sensitive paper!"
"Precisely."
"And could you find aconitine in Sauvresy's body?"
"Undoubtedly."
M. Lecoq was radiant, as if he were now certain of fulfilling what had seemed to him a very difficult task.
"Very well," said he. "Our inquest seems to be complete. The history of the victims imparted to us by Monsieur Plantat gives us the key to all the events which have followed the unhappy Sauvresy's death. Thus, the hatred of this pair, who were in appearance so united, is explained; and it is also clear why Hector has ruined a charming young girl with a splendid dowry, instead of making her his wife. There is nothing surprising in Tremorel's casting aside his name and personality to reappear under another guise; he killed his wife because he was constrained to do so by the logic of events. He could not fly while she was alive, and yet he could not continue to live at Valfeuillu. And above all, the paper for which he searched with such desperation, when every moment was an affair of life and death to him, was none other than Sauvresy's manuscript, his condemnation and the proof of his first crime."
M. Lecoq talked eagerly, as if he had a personal animosity against the Count de Tremorel; such was his nature; and he always avowed laughingly that he could not help having a grudge against the criminals whom he pursued. There was an account to settle between him and them; hence the ardor of his pursuit. Perhaps it was a simple matter of instinct with him, like that which impels the hunting hound on the track of his game.
"It is clear enough now," he went on, "that it was Mademoiselle Courtois who put an end to his hesitation and eternal delay. His passion for her, irritated by obstacles, goaded him to delirium. On learning her condition, he lost his head and forgot all prudence and reason. He was wearied, too, of a punishment which began anew each morning; he saw himself lost, and his wife sacrificing herself for the malignant pleasure of sacrificing him. Terrified, he took the resolution to commit this murder."
Many of the circumstances which had established M. Lecoq's conviction had escaped Dr. Gendron.
"What!" cried he, stupefied. "Do you believe in Mademoiselle Laurence's complicity?"
The detective earnestly protested by a gesture.
"No, Doctor, certainly not; heaven forbid that I should have such an idea. Mademoiselle Courtois was and is still ignorant of this crime. But she knew that Tremorel would abandon his wife for her. This flight had been discussed, planned, and agreed upon between them; they made an appointment to meet at a certain place, on a certain day."
"But this letter," said the doctor.
M. Plantat could scarcely conceal his emotion when Laurence was being talked about.
"This letter," cried he, "which has plunged her family into the deepest grief, and which will perhaps kill poor Courtois, is only one more scene of the infamous drama which the count has planned."
"Oh," said the doctor, "is it possible?"
"I am firmly of Monsieur Plantat's opinion," said the detective. "Last evening we had the same suspicion at the same moment at the mayor's. I read and re-read her letter, and could have sworn that it did not emanate from herself. The count gave her a rough draft from which she copied it. We mustn't deceive ourselves; this letter was meditated, pondered on, and composed at leisure. Those were not the expressions of an unhappy young girl of twenty who was going to kill herself to escape dishonor."
"Perhaps you are right," remarked the doctor visibly moved. "But how can you imagine that Tremorel succeeded in persuading her to do this wretched act?"
"How? See here, Doctor, I am not much experienced in such things, having seldom had occasion to study the characters of well-brought-up young girls; yet it seems to me very simple. Mademoiselle Courtois saw the time coming when her disgrace would be public, and so prepared for it, and was even ready to die if necessary."
M. Plantat shuddered; a conversation which he had had with Laurence occurred to him. She had asked him, he remembered, about certain poisonous plants which he was cultivating, and had been anxious to know how the poisonous juices could be extracted from them.
"Yes," said he, "she has thought of dying."
"Well," resumed the detective, "the count took her in one of the moods when these sad thoughts haunted the poor girl, and was easily able to complete his work of ruin. She undoubtedly told him that she preferred death to shame, and he proved to her that, being in the condition in which she was, she had no right to kill herself. He said that he was very unhappy; and that not being free, he could not repair his fault; but he offered to sacrifice his life for her. What should she do to save both of them? Abandon her parents, make them believe that she had committed suicide, while he, on his side, would desert his house and his wife. Doubtless she resisted for awhile; but she finally consented to everything; she fled, and copied and posted the infamous letter dictated by her lover."
The doctor was convinced.
"Yes," he muttered, "those are doubtless the means he employed."
"But what an idiot he was," resumed M. Lecoq, "not to perceive that the strange coincidence between his disappearance and Laurence's suicide would be remarked! He said to himself, 'Probably people will think that I, as well as my wife, have been murdered; and the law, having its victim in Guespin, will not look for any other.'"
M. Plantat made a gesture of impotent rage.
"Ah," cried he, "and we know not where the wretch has hid himself andLaurence."
The detective took him by the arm and pressed it.
"Reassure yourself," said he, coolly. "We'll find him, or my name's not Lecoq; and to be honest, I must say that our task does not seem to me a difficult one."
Several timid knocks at the door interrupted the speaker. It was late, and the household was already awake and about. Mme. Petit in her anxiety and curiosity had put her ear to the key-hole at least ten times, but in vain.
"What can they be up to in there?" said she to Louis. "Here they've been shut up these twelve hours without eating or drinking. At all events I'll get breakfast."
It was not Mme. Petit, however, who dared to knock on the door; but Louis, the gardener, who came to tell his master of the ravages which had been made in his flower-pots and shrubs. At the same time he brought in certain singular articles which he had picked up on the sward, and which M. Lecoq recognized at once.
"Heavens!" cried he, "I forgot myself. Here I go on quietly talking with my face exposed, as if it was not broad daylight; and people might come in at any moment!" And turning to Louis, who was very much surprised to see this dark young man whom he had certainly not admitted the night before, he added:
"Give me those little toilet articles, my good fellow; they belong to me."
Then, by a turn of his hand, he readjusted his physiognomy of last night, while the master of the house went out to give some orders, which M. Lecoq did so deftly, that when M. Plantat returned, he could scarcely believe his eyes.
They sat down to breakfast and ate their meal as silently as they had done the dinner of the evening before, losing no time about it. They appreciated the value of the passing moments; M. Domini was waiting for them at Corbeil, and was doubtless getting impatient at their delay.
Louis had just placed a sumptuous dish of fruit upon the table, when it occurred to M. Lecoq that Robelot was still shut up in the closet.
"Probably the rascal needs something," said he.
M. Plantat wished to send his servant to him; but M. Lecoq objected.
"He's a dangerous rogue," said he. "I'll go myself."
He went out, but almost instantly his voice was heard:
"Messieurs! Messieurs, see here!"
The doctor and M. Plantat hastened into the library.
Across the threshold of the closet was stretched the body of the bone-setter. He had killed himself.