"The letter is dated yesterday morning; and apparently, if it had not been for the providential arrival of that Englishman, the poor fellow would have taken advantage of Monsieur de Sallenauve's absence last night to kill himself.""The Englishman must have suspected his intention, and carried him off to divert him from it.If that is so, he won't let him out of his sight.""And we may also count on Monsieur Sallenauve, who has probably joined them by this time.""Then I don't see that there is anything so terrible in the letter";and again he offered to take it.
"No," said Madame de l'Estorade, drawing back, "if I ask you not to read it.Why give yourself painful emotions? The letter not only expresses the intention of suicide, but it shows that our poor friend is completely out of his mind."At this instant piercing screams from Rene, her youngest child, put Madame de l'Estorade into one of those material agitations which she less than any other woman was able to control.
"My God!" she cried, as she rushed from the study, "what has happened?"Less ready to be alarmed, Monsieur de l'Estorade contented himself by going to the door and asking a servant what was the matter.
"Oh, nothing, Monsieur le comte," replied the man."Monsieur Rene in shutting a drawer pinched his finger; that is all."The peer of France thought it unnecessary to convey himself to the scene of action; he knew, by experience in like cases, that he must let his wife's exaggerated maternal solicitude have free course, on pain of being sharply snubbed himself.As he returned to his desk, he noticed lying on the ground the famous letter, which Madame de l'Estorade had evidently dropped in her hasty flight.Opportunity and a certain fatality which appears to preside over the conduct of all human affairs, impelled Monsieur de l'Estorade, who thought little of the shock his wife had dreaded for him, to satisfy his curiosity by reading the letter.
Marie-Gaston wrote as follows:--
Madame,--This letter will seem to you less amusing than those Iaddressed to you from Arcis-sur-Aube.But I trust you will not be alarmed by the decision which I now announce.I am going to rejoin my wife, from whom I have been too long separated; and this evening, shortly after midnight, I shall be with her, never to part again.
You have, no doubt, said to yourselves--you and Sallenauve--that Iwas acting strangely in not visiting her grave; that is a remark that two of my servants made the other day, not being aware that Ioverheard them.I should certainly be a great fool to go and look at a stone in the cemetery which can make me no response, when every night, at twelve o'clock, I hear a little rap on the door of my room, and our dear Louise comes in, not changed at all, except, as I think, more plump and beautiful.She has had great trouble in obtaining permission from Marie, queen of angels, to withdraw me from earth.But last night she brought me formal leave, sealed with green wax; and she also gave me a tiny vial of hydrocyanic acid.A single drop of that acid puts us to sleep, and on waking up we find ourselves on the other side.
Louise desired me to give you a message from her.I am to tell you that Monsieur de l'Estorade has a disease of the liver and will not live long, and that after his death you are to marry Sallenauve, because, on the other side, husbands and wives who really love each other are reunited; and she thinks we shall all four--she and I and you and Sallenauve--be much happier together than if we had your present husband, who is very dull, and whom you married reluctantly.
My message given, nothing remains for me, madame, but to wish you all the patience you need to continue for your allotted time in this low world, and to subscribe myself Your very affectionately devoted Marie-Gaston.
If, after reading this letter, it had occurred to Monsieur de l'Estorade to look at himself in the glass, he would have seen, in the sudden convulsion and discoloration of his face, the outward and visible signs of the terrible blow which his unfortunate curiosity had brought down upon him.His heart, his mind, his self-respect staggered under one and the same shock; the madness evident in the sort of prediction made about him only added to his sense of its horror.
Presently convincing himself, like a mussulman, that madmen have the gift of second sight, he believed he was a lost man, and instantly a stabbing pain began on his liver side, while in the direction of Sallenauve, his predicted successor, an awful hatred succeeded to his mild good-will.But at the same time, conscious of the total want of reason and even of the absurdity of the impression which had suddenly surged into his mind, he was afraid lest its existence should be suspected, and he looked about him to see in what way he could conceal from his wife his fatal indiscretion, the consequences of which must forever weigh upon his life.It was certain, he thought, that if she found the paper in his study she would deduce therefrom the fact that he had read it.Rising from his desk, he softly opened the door leading from the study to the salon, crossed the latter room on tiptoe, and dropped the letter at the farther end of it, as Madame de l'Estorade might suppose she had herself done in her hasty departure.
Then returning to his study, he scattered his papers over his desk, like a school-boy up to mischief, who wants to mislead his master by a show of application, intending to appear absorbed in his accounts when his wife returned.Useless to add that he listened with keen anxiety lest some other person than she should come into the salon; in which case he determined to rush out and prevent other eyes from reading the dreadful secrets contained in that paper.
