"What next, monseigneur?" said Vanringham, half-whispering.
"Why, next," said the Prince de Gâtinais, "I imagine that he will kill us
both. Meantime, as Louis says, the wine is really excellent. So you may
refill my glass, my man, and restore to me my vial of little tablets"....
He was selecting a bonbon from the comfit-dish when his son returned into
the apartment. Very tenderly Louis de Soyecourt laid his burden upon a
settle, and then drew the older man toward it. You noted first how the
thing lacked weight: a flower snapped from its stalk could hardly have
seemed more fragile. The loosened hair strained toward the floor and
seemed to have sucked all color from the thing to inform that thick hair's
insolent glory; the tint of Nelchen's lips was less sprightly, and for the
splendor of her eyes Death had substituted a conscientious copy in crayons:
otherwise there was no change; otherwise she seemed to lie there and muse
on something remote and curious, yet quite as she would have wished it to
be.
"See, my father," Louis de Soyecourt said, "she was only a child,
more little even than I. Never in her brief life had she wronged any
one,--never, I believe, had she known an unkind thought. Always she
laughed, you understand--Oh, my father, is it not pitiable that Nelchen
will never laugh any more?"
"I entreat of God to have mercy upon her soul," said the old Prince de
Gâtinais. "I entreat of God that the soul of her murderer may dwell
eternally in the nethermost pit of hell."
"I would cry amen," Louis de Soyecourt said, "if I could any longer believe
in God."