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 bal.u.s.ters, he had come down.
"I have heard all," he said, casting crushing looks at both the guilty ones.
The countess uttered a deep, hoa.r.s.e 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 G.o.d! You would allow me to be condemned for a crime which I have 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 a.s.sa.s.sin. 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.
XXIX.
M. Folgat had just risen. Standing before his mirror, hung up to one of the windows in his room, he had just finished shaving himself, when the door was thrown open violently, and old Anthony appeared quite beside himself.
"Ah, sir, what a terrible thing!"
"What?"
"Run away, disappeared!"
"Who?"
"Master Jacques!"
The surprise was so great, that M. Folgat nearly let his razor drop: he said, however, peremptorily,--
"That is false!"
"Alas, sir," replied the old servant, "everybody is full of it in town.
All the details are known. I have just seen a man who says he met master last night, about eleven o"clock, running like a madman down National Street."
"That is absurd."
"I have only told Miss Dionysia so far, and she sent me to you. You ought to go and make inquiry."
The advice was not needed. Wiping his face hastily, the young advocate went to dress at once. He was ready in a moment; and, having run down the stairs, he was crossing the pa.s.sage when he heard somebody call his name. He turned round, and saw Dionysia making him a sign to come into the boudoir in which she was usually sitting. He did so.
Dionysia and the young advocate alone knew what a desperate venture Jacques had undertaken the night before. They had not said a word about it to each other; but each had noticed the preoccupation of the other.
All the evening M. Folgat had not spoken ten words, and Dionysia had, immediately after dinner, gone up to her own room.
"Well?" she asked.
"The report, madam, must be false," replied the advocate.
"Who knows?"
"His evasion would be a confession of his crime. It is only the guilty who try to escape; and M. de Boiscoran is innocent. You can rest quite a.s.sured, madam, it is not so. I pray you be quiet."
Who would not have pitied the poor girl at that moment? She was as white as her collar, and trembled violently. Big tears ran over her eyes; and at each word a violent sob rose in her throat.
"You know where Jacques went last night?" she asked again.
"Yes."
She turned her head a little aside, and went on, in a hardly audible voice,--
"He went to see once more a person whose influence over him is, probably, all powerful. It may be that she has upset him, stunned him.
Might she not have prevailed upon him to escape from the disgrace of appearing in court, charged with such a crime?"
"No, madam, no!"
"This person has always been Jacques"s evil genius. She loves him, I am sure. She must have been incensed at the idea of his becoming my husband. Perhaps, in order to induce him to flee, she has fled with him."