And in a voice trembling with pent-up passion, now sweet and soft like a tender caress, and now deep and sonorous like a bell, she went on,--"What keeps us? Since you have escaped from prison, the greatest difficulty is overcome. I thought at first of taking our girl, your girl, Jacques; but she is very ill; and besides a child might betray us. If we go alone, they will never overtake us. We will have money enough, I am sure, Jacques. We will flee to those distant countries which appear in books of travels in such fairy-like beauty. There, unknown, forgotten, unnoticed, our life will be one unbroken enjoyment. You will never again say that I bargain. I will be yours, entirely, and solely yours, body and soul, your wife, your slave."She threw her head back, and with half-closed eyes, bending with her whole person toward him, she said in melting tones,--"Say, Jacques, will you? Jacques!"
He pushed her aside with a fierce gesture. It seemed to him almost a sacrilege that she also, like Dionysia, should propose to him to flee.
"Rather the galleys!" he cried.
She turned deadly pale; a spasm of rage convulsed her features; and drawing back, stiff and stern, she said,--"What else do you want?"
"Your help to save me," he replied.
"At the risk of ruining myself?"
He made no reply.
Then she, who had just now been all humility, raised herself to her full height, and in a tone of bitterest sarcasm said slowly,--"In other words, you want me to sacrifice myself, and at the same time all my family. For your sake? Yes, but even more for Miss Chandore's sake. And you think that it is quite a simple thing. I am the past to you, satiety, disgust: she is the future to you, desire, happiness.
And you think it quite natural that the old love should make a footstool of her love and her honor for the new love? You think little of my being disgraced, provided she be honored; of my weeping bitterly, if she but smile? Well, no, no! it is madness in you to come and ask me to save you, so that you may throw yourself into the arms of another. It is madness, when in order to tear you from Dionysia, Iam ready to ruin myself, provided only that you be lost to her forever.""Wretch!" cried Jacques.
She looked at him with a mocking air, and her eyes beamed with infernal audacity.
"You do not know me yet," she cried. "Go, speak, denounce me! M.
Folgat no doubt has told you how I can deny and defend myself."Maddened by indignation, and excited to a point where reason loses its power over us, Jacques de Boiscoran moved with uplifted hand towards the countess, when suddenly a voice said,--"Do not strike that woman!"
Jacques and the countess turned round, and uttered, both at the same instant, the same kind of sharp, terrible cry, which must have been heard a great distance.
In the frame of the door stood Count Claudieuse, a revolver in his hand, and ready to fire.
He looked as pale as a ghost; and the white flannel dressing-gown which he had hastily thrown around him hung like a pall around his lean limbs. The first cry uttered by the countess had been heard by him on the bed on which he lay apparently dying. A terrible presentiment had seized him. He had risen from his bed, and, dragging himself slowly along, holding painfully to the balusters, he had come down.
"I have heard all," he said, casting crushing looks at both the guilty ones.
The countess uttered a deep, hoarse sigh, and sank into a chair. But Jacques drew himself up, and said,--"I have insulted you terribly, sir. Avenge yourself."The count shrugged his shoulders.
"Great God! You would allow me to be condemned for a crime which Ihave not committed. Ah, that would be the meanest cowardice."The count was so feeble that he had to lean against the door-post.
"Would it be cowardly?" he asked. "Then, what do you call the act of that miserable man who meanly, disgracefully robs another man of his wife, and palms off his own children upon him? It is true you are neither an incendiary nor an assassin. But what is fire in my house in comparison with the ruin of all my faith? What are the wounds in my body in comparison with that wound in my heart, which never can heal?
I leave you to the court, sir."
Jacques was terrified; he saw the abyss opening before him that was to swallow him up.
"Rather death," he cried,--"death."
And, baring his breast, he said,--
"But why do you not fire, sir? Why do you not fire? Are you afraid of blood? Shoot! I have been the lover of your wife: your youngest daughter is my child."The count lowered his weapon.
"The courts of justice are more certain," he said. "You have robbed me of my honor: now I want yours. And, if you cannot be condemned without it, I shall say, I shall swear, that I recognized you. You shall go to the galleys, M. de Boiscoran."He was on the point of coming forward; but his strength was exhausted, and he fell forward, face downward, and arms outstretched.
Overcome with horror, half mad, Jacques fled.