“Daniel, my dear Daniel, my only friend in this world, and my sole hope,
how could you intrust me to such an infamous person? How could you hand
over your poor Henrietta to such a wretch? This Maxime de Brevan, this
scoundrel, whom you considered your friend, if you knew”--
This was the long letter written by Henrietta the day after M. de Brevan
had declared to her that he loved her, and that sooner or later, whether
she chose or not, she should be his, giving her the choice between the
horrors of starvation and the disgrace of becoming his wife.
As Daniel went on reading, a deadly pallor was spreading over his face,
pale as it was already; his eyes grew unnaturally large; and big drops
of perspiration trickled down his temples. A nervous trembling seized
him, so violent, that it made his teeth rattle; sobs rose from his
chest; and a pinkish foam appeared on his discolored lips. At last he
reached the concluding lines,--
“Now,” the young girl wrote, “since, probably, none of my letters have
reached you, they must have been intercepted. This one will reach you;
for I am going to carry it to the post-office myself. For God’s
sake, Daniel, return! Come back quick, if you wish to save, not your
Henrietta’s honor, for I shall know how to die, but your Henrietta’s
life!”
Then the surgeon and the sailor witnessed a frightful sight.
This man, who but just now had not been able to raise himself on his
pillows; this unfortunate sufferer, who looked more like a skeleton
than a human being; this wounded man, who had scarcely his breath left
him,--threw back his blankets, and rushed to the middle of the room,
crying, with a terrible voice,--
“My clothes, Lefloch, my clothes!”
The doctor had hastened forward to support him; but he pushed him aside
with one arm, continuing,--
“By the holy name of God, Lefloch, make haste! Run to the harbor,
wretch! there must be a steamer there. I buy it. Let it get up steam,
instantly. In an hour I must be on my way.”
But this great effort had exhausted him. He tottered; his eyes dosed;
and he fainted away in the arms of his sailor, stammering,--
“That letter, doctor, that letter; read it, and you will see I must go.”
Raising his lieutenant, and holding him like a child in his arms,
Lefloch carried him back to his bed; but, for more than ten minutes, the
doctor and the faithful sailor were unable to tell whether they had not
a corpse before their eyes, and were wasting all their attentions.
No! It was Lefloch who first noticed a slight tremor.
“He moves!” he cried out. “Look, commandant, he moves! He is alive!
We’ll pull him through yet.”
They succeeded, in fact, to rekindle this life which had appeared so
nearly extinct; but they did _not_ bring back that able intellect. The
cold and indifferent look with which Daniel stared at them, when he at
last opened his eyes once more, told them that the tottering reason of
the poor man had not been strong enough to resist this new shock. And
still he must have retained some glimpses of the past; for his
efforts to collect his thoughts were unmistakable. He passed his hands
mechanically over his forehead, as if trying to remove the mist
which enshrouded his mind. Then a convulsion shook him; and his lips
overflowed with incoherent words, in which the recollection of the
fearful reality, and the extravagant conceptions of delirium, were
strangely mixed.
“I foresaw it,” said the chief surgeon. “I foresaw it but too fully.”
He had by this time exhausted all the resources of his skill and long
experience; he had followed all the suggestions nature vouchsafed; and
he could do nothing more now, but wait. Picking up the fatal letter, he
went into the embrasure of one of the windows to read it. Daniel had
in his wanderings said enough to enable the doctor to understand the
piercing cry of distress contained in the poor girl’s letter; and
Lefloch, who watched him, saw a big tear running down his cheek, and in
the next moment a flood of crimson overspread his face.
“This is enough to madden a man!” he growled. “Poor Champcey!”
And like a man who no longer possesses himself, who must move somehow,
he stuffed the letter in his pocket, and went out, swearing till the
plaster seemed to fall from the ceiling.
Precisely at the same hour, the magistrate, who had been notified of the
trial, came to ask for news. Seeing the old surgeon cross the hospital
yard, he ran up and asked, as soon as he was within hearing,--
“Well?”
The doctor went a few steps farther, and then replied in a tone of
despair,--
“Lieut. Champcey is lost!”
“Great God! What do you mean?”
“What I think. Daniel has a violent brain-fever, or rather congestion of
the brain. Weakened, exhausted, extenuated as he is, how can he endure
it? He cannot; that is evident. It would take another miracle to
save him now; and you may rest assured it won’t be done. In less
than twenty-four hours he will be a dead man, and his assassins will
triumph.”
“Oh!”
The old surgeon’s eyes glared with rage; and a sardonic smile curled his
lips as he continued,--
“And who could keep those rascals from triumphing? If Daniel dies, you
will be bound to release that scamp, the wretched murderer whom you keep
imprisoned,--that man Crochard, surnamed Bagnolet; for there will be no
evidence. Or, if you send him before a court, he will be declared guilty
of involuntary homicide. And yet you know, as well as I do, he has
wantonly fired at one of the noblest creatures I have ever known. And,
when he has served his term, he will receive the price of Champcey’s
life, and he will spend it in orgies; and the others, the true
criminals, who have hired him, will go about the world with lofty pride,
rich, honored, and haughty.”
“Doctor!”