“No, I do not think so.”
And then I said:
“What is the matter? Is it serious?”
“I do not know yet,” he replied. “I will come again this evening.”
He came that evening. My son had remained almost all day in a
condition of drowsiness, coughing from time to time. During the
night inflammation of the lungs set in.
That lasted ten days. I cannot express what I suffered in those
interminable hours that divide morning from night, right from
morning.
He died.
And since--since that moment, I have not passed one hour, not a
single hour, without the frightful burning recollection, a gnawing
recollection, a memory that seems to wring my heart, awaking in me
like a savage beast imprisoned in the depth of my soul.
Oh! if I could have gone mad!
M. Poirel de la Voulte raised his spectacles with a motion that was
peculiar to him whenever he finished reading a contract; and the three
heirs of the defunct looked at one another without speaking, pale and
motionless.
At the end of a minute the lawyer resumed:
“That must be destroyed.”
The other two bent their heads in sign of assent. He lighted a candle,
carefully separated the pages containing the damaging confession from
those relating to the disposition of money, then he held them over the
candle and threw them into the fireplace.
And they watched the white sheets as they burned, till they were
presently reduced to little crumbling black heaps. And as some words
were still visible in white tracing, the daughter, with little strokes
of the toe of her shoe, crushed the burning paper, mixing it with the
old ashes in the fireplace.
Then all three stood there watching it for some time, as if they feared
that the destroyed secret might escape from the fireplace.