But Blanche was pitiless.
"You have not seen Martial! Tell me, then, who gave you this costly furniture, these silken hangings, all the luxury that surrounds you?"
"Chanlouineau."
Blanche shrugged her shoulders.
"So be it," she said, with an ironical smile, "but is it Chanlouineau for whom you are waiting this evening? Is it for Chanlouineau you have warmed these slippers and laid this table? Was it Chanlouineau who sent his clothing by a peasant named Poignot? You see that I know all----"
But her victim was silent.
"For whom are you waiting?" she insisted. "Answer!"
"I cannot!"
"You know that it is your lover! wretched woman--my husband, Martial!"
Marie-Anne was considering the situation as well as her intolerable sufferings and troubled mind would permit.
Could she tell what guests she was expecting?
To name Baron d"Escorval to Blanche, would it not ruin and betray him?
They hoped for a safe-conduct, a revision of judgment, but he was none the less under sentence of death, executory in twenty-four hours.
"So you refuse to tell me whom you expect here in an hour--at midnight."
"I refuse."
But a sudden impulse took possession of the sufferer"s mind.
Though the slightest movement caused her intolerable agony, she tore open her dress and drew from her bosom a folded paper.
"I am not the mistress of the Marquis de Sairmeuse," she said, in an almost inaudible voice; "I am the wife of Maurice d"Escorval. Here is the proof--read."
No sooner had Blanche glanced at the paper, than she became as pale as her victim. Her sight failed her; there was a strange ringing in her ears, a cold sweat started from every pore.
This paper was the marriage-certificate of Maurice and Marie-Anne, drawn up by the cure of Vigano, witnessed by the old physician and Bavois, and sealed with the seal of the parish.
The proof was indisputable. She had committed a useless crime; she had murdered an innocent woman.
The first good impulse of her life made her heart beat more quickly.
She did not stop to consider; she forgot the danger to which she exposed herself, and in a ringing voice she cried:
"Help! help!"
Eleven o"clock was sounding; the whole country was asleep. The farm-house nearest the Borderie was half a league distant.
The voice of Blanche was lost in the deep stillness of the night.
In the garden below Aunt Medea heard it, perhaps; but she would have allowed herself to be chopped in pieces rather than stir from her place.
And yet, there was one who heard that cry of distress. Had Blanche and her victim been less overwhelmed with despair, they would have heard a noise upon the staircase which creaked beneath the tread of a man who was cautiously ascending it. But it was not a saviour, for he did not answer the appeal. But even though there had been aid near at hand, it would have come too late.
Marie-Anne felt that there was no longer any hope for her, and that it was the chill of death which was creeping up to her heart. She felt that her life was fast ebbing away.
So, when Blanche seemed about to rush out in search of a.s.sistance, she detained her by a gesture, and gently said:
"Blanche."
The murderess paused.
"Do not summon anyone; it would do no good. Remain; be calm, that I may at least die in peace. It will not be long now."
"Hush! do not speak so. You must not, you shall not die! If you should die--great G.o.d! what would my life be afterward?"
Marie-Anne made no reply. The poison was pursuing its work of dissolution. Her breath made a whistling sound as it forced its way through her inflamed throat; her tongue, when she moved it, produced in her mouth the terrible sensation of a piece of red-hot iron; her lips were parched and swollen; her hands, inert and paralyzed, would no longer obey her will.
But the horror of the situation restored Blanche"s calmness.
"All is not yet lost," she exclaimed. "It was in that great box there upon the table, where I found"--she dared not utter the word poison--"the white powder which I poured into the bowl. You know this powder; you must know the antidote."
Marie-Anne sadly shook her head.
"Nothing can save me now," she murmured, in an almost inaudible voice; "but I do not complain. Who knows the misery from which death may preserve me? I do not crave life; I have suffered so much during the past year; I have endured such humiliation; I have wept so much! A curse was upon me!"
She was suddenly endowed with that clearness of mental vision so often granted to the dying. She saw how she had wrought her own undoing by consenting to accept the perfidious role imposed upon her by her father, and how she, herself, had paved the way for the falsehoods, slander, crimes and misfortunes of which she had been the victim.
Her voice grew fainter and fainter. Worn out by suffering, a sensation of drowsiness stole over her. She was falling asleep in the arms of death.
Suddenly such a terrible thought pierced the stupor which enveloped her that she uttered a heart-breaking cry:
"My child!"
Collecting, by a superhuman effort, all the will, energy, and strength that the poison had left her, she straightened herself in her arm-chair, her features contracted by mortal anguish.
"Blanche!" she said, with an energy of which one would have supposed her incapable. "Blanche, listen to me. It is the secret of my life which I am about to disclose; no one suspects it. I have a son by Maurice. Alas!
many months have elapsed since my husband disappeared. If he is dead, what will become of my child? Blanche, you, who have killed me, must swear to me that you will be a mother to my child!"
Blanche was utterly overcome.
"I swear!" she sobbed, "I swear!"
"On that condition, but on that condition alone, I pardon you. But take care! Do not forget your oath! Blanche, G.o.d sometimes permits the dead to avenge themselves! You have sworn, remember.
"My spirit will allow you no rest if you do not fulfil your vow."
"I will remember," sobbed Blanche; "I will remember. But the child----"