CII. Valentine.

CII

Valentine.

The night-light kept burning on Valentine's mantelpiece, exhausting the last drops of oil still floating atop the water; already a reddish circle tinged the alabaster of the globe, already the brighter flame gave off those final cracklings which, in inanimate things, seem like the last convulsions of agony so often compared to those of poor human creatures; a low and sinister daylight began to cast an opaline reflection upon the white curtains and the young girl's sheets.

All the noises of the street were hushed for this once, and the silence within was frightful.

The door of Édouard's room then opened, and a face we have already seen appeared in the mirror opposite the door: it was Mme de Villefort returning to observe the effect of the draught.

She stopped on the threshold, listened to the crackling of the lamp, the only perceptible sound in a chamber one would have thought deserted, then she advanced softly toward the night table to see if Valentine's glass was empty.

It was still a quarter full, as we have said.

Mme de Villefort took it and went to empty it into the ashes, which she stirred to facilitate the absorption of the liquid, then she carefully rinsed the crystal, dried it with her own handkerchief, and replaced it on the night table.

Anyone whose gaze could have plunged into the interior of the room might then have seen Mme de Villefort's hesitation in fixing her eyes upon Valentine and in approaching the bed.

That gloomy gleam, that silence, that terrible poetry of the night were no doubt combining with the frightful poetry of her conscience: the poisoner was afraid of her handiwork.

At length she took courage, drew back the curtain, leaned upon the head of the bed, and looked at Valentine.

The young girl no longer breathed; her half-parted teeth let escape no atom of that breath which betrays life; her whitening lips had ceased to tremble; her eyes, drowned in a violet vapor that seemed to have filtered beneath the skin, formed a whiter prominence where the globe swelled the eyelid, and her long black lashes striped a skin already dull as wax.

Mme de Villefort contemplated that face so eloquent in its immobility; then she took courage, and, lifting the coverlet, pressed her hand upon the young girl's heart.

It was mute and icy.

What beat beneath her hand was the artery of her own fingers: she withdrew her hand with a shudder.

Valentine's arm hung outside the bed; that arm, in all the part attached to the shoulder and extending to the bend, seemed molded from one of Germain Pilon's Graces; but the forearm was slightly deformed by a cramp, and the wrist, of so pure a shape, rested, somewhat stiffened and with fingers spread, upon the mahogany.

The base of the nails was bluish.

For Mme de Villefort there was no longer any doubt: all was finished, the terrible work, the last she had to accomplish, was at last consummated.

The poisoner had nothing more to do in that room; she retreated with such caution that it was evident she dreaded the creaking of her feet upon the carpet, but, even as she retreated, she still held the curtain raised, absorbing that spectacle of death which bears in itself its irresistible attraction, so long as death is not decomposition, but only immobility, so long as it remains mystery, and is not yet loathing.

The minutes flowed by; Mme de Villefort could not let go of that curtain which she held suspended like a shroud above Valentine's head. She paid her tribute to reverie: the reverie of crime, that must be remorse.

At that moment, the cracklings of the night-light redoubled.

Mme de Villefort, at that noise, started and let the curtain fall.

At the same instant the night-light went out, and the room was plunged into frightful obscurity.

In the midst of that obscurity, the clock awoke and struck half past four.

The poisoner, terrified by those successive shocks, groped her way back to the door, and went to her own room, the sweat of anguish upon her brow.

The darkness lasted yet two hours.

Then by degrees a wan daylight invaded the apartment, filtering through the slats of the shutters; then by degrees again it grew broad, and came to restore color and form to objects and bodies.

It was at this moment that the cough of the sick-nurse rang out upon the stairs, and that woman entered Valentine's room, a cup in her hand.

For a father, for a lover, the first glance would have been decisive; Valentine was dead; for that hireling, Valentine was but asleep.

“Good,” said she, approaching the night table, “she has drunk part of her potion, the glass is two-thirds empty.”

Then she went to the fireplace, relit the fire, settled into her armchair, and, though she had but just left her bed, profited by Valentine's sleep to doze a few moments more.

The clock woke her, striking eight.

Then astonished at that stubborn sleep in which the young girl remained, frightened at that arm hanging outside the bed, which the sleeper had not drawn back to her, she advanced toward the bed, and it was only then that she noticed those cold lips and that frozen breast.

She would have drawn the arm back toward the body, but the arm obeyed only with that frightful stiffness which no sick-nurse could mistake.

She uttered a horrible cry.

Then, running to the door:

“Help! help!” she cried.

“How, help!” answered from the foot of the stairs the voice of M. d'Avrigny.

It was the hour at which the doctor was accustomed to come.

“How, help!” cried the voice of Villefort, issuing precipitately from his study; “doctor, did you not hear the cry for help?

“Yes, yes; let us go up,” answered d'Avrigny, “let us go quickly to Valentine.”

But before the physician and the father had entered, the servants who were on the same floor, in the rooms or in the corridors, had come in, and, seeing Valentine pale and motionless upon her bed, raised their hands to heaven and staggered as if struck with vertigo.

“Call Mme de Villefort! wake Mme de Villefort!” cried the king's attorney, from the door of the room into which he seemed afraid to enter.

But the servants, instead of answering, looked at M. d'Avrigny, who had entered, he who had run to Valentine and was lifting her in his arms.

“Another of them...” he murmured, letting her fall. “O my God, my God, when will you weary of this?”

Villefort sprang into the apartment.

“What say you, my God!” he cried, raising both hands to heaven. “Doctor!... doctor!...

“I say that Valentine is dead!” answered d'Avrigny in a voice solemn and terrible in its solemnity.

M. de Villefort fell as if his legs were broken, and dropped his head upon Valentine's bed.

At the doctor's words, at the father's cries, the terrified servants fled with muffled imprecations; one heard upon the stairs and through the corridors their hurried steps, then a great commotion in the courtyards, then all was still; the noise died away: from the first to the last, they had deserted the accursed house.

At this moment Mme de Villefort, one arm half-thrust into her morning wrapper, lifted the hangings; for an instant she remained upon the threshold, seeming to question the bystanders and calling to her aid a few rebellious tears.

Suddenly she took a step, or rather a bound forward, arms extended toward the table.

She had just seen d'Avrigny bend curiously over that table, and take up the glass which she was certain to have emptied during the night.

The glass was found a third full, exactly as it had been when she had thrown its contents into the ashes.

The specter of Valentine rising before the poisoner would have produced less effect upon her.

Indeed, it was indeed the color of the brew that she had poured into Valentine's glass, and that Valentine had drunk; it was indeed that poison which cannot deceive the eye of M. d'Avrigny, and which M. d'Avrigny was regarding attentively: it was indeed a miracle that God had doubtless wrought, so that there should remain, despite the murderer's precautions, a trace, a proof, a denunciation of the crime.

Meanwhile, while Mme de Villefort remained motionless as a statue of Terror, while Villefort, his head hidden in the shroud-like sheets, saw nothing of what passed around him, d'Avrigny approached the window to examine the contents of the glass more closely with his eye, and to taste a drop taken upon the tip of his finger.

“Ah!” he murmured, “it is no longer brucine now; let us see what it is!”

Then he ran to one of the cabinets in Valentine's room, a cabinet transformed into a pharmacy, and, drawing from its little silver case a vial of nitric acid, let fall a few drops into the opaline liquid, which at once turned into half a glass of vermilion blood.

“Ah!” said d'Avrigny, with the horror of the judge before whom the truth is revealed, mingled with the joy of the scholar before whom a problem unfolds.

Mme de Villefort turned about for an instant; her eyes shot forth flames, then were extinguished; she sought, staggering, for the door with her hand, and disappeared.

A moment later, the distant sound was heard of a body falling upon the parquet.

But no one paid it any heed. The nurse was busy watching the chemical analysis, Villefort was still overcome.

M. d'Avrigny alone had followed Mme de Villefort with his eyes and had noted her precipitate departure.

He lifted the hangings of Valentine's room and his gaze, through Édouard's room, could plunge into Mme de Villefort's apartment, where he saw her stretched motionless upon the parquet.

“Go to the aid of Mme de Villefort,” he said to the nurse; “Mme de Villefort has taken ill.”

“But Mlle Valentine?” stammered she.

“Mlle Valentine has no further need of aid,” said d'Avrigny, “since Mlle Valentine is dead.”

“Dead! dead!” sighed Villefort in the paroxysm of a grief all the more rending in that it was new, unknown, unheard-of for that heart of bronze.

“Dead! do you say?” cried a third voice; “who said that Valentine was dead?”

The two men turned, and on the threshold beheld Morrel standing, pale, distraught, terrible.

Here is what had happened:

At his usual hour, and by the small door leading to Noirtier's rooms, Morrel had presented himself.

Contrary to custom, he found the door open; he had no need, therefore, to ring, and entered.

In the vestibule he waited a moment, calling for any servant to introduce him to old Noirtier.

But no one had answered; the servants, as we know, had deserted the house.

Morrel that day had no particular reason for anxiety: he had the promise of Monte-Cristo that Valentine would live, and hitherto the promise had been faithfully kept. Each evening the count had given him good news, confirmed the next day by Noirtier himself.

However, that solitude seemed strange to him; he called a second time, a third time, same silence.

Then he resolved to go up.

Noirtier's door was open like the other doors.

The first thing he saw was the old man in his armchair, in his usual place; his dilated eyes seemed to express an inward dread confirmed yet again by the strange pallor spread over his features.

“How are you, sir?” asked the young man, not without a certain tightening of the heart.

“Well!” made the old man with his eyelid signal, “well!”

But his countenance seemed to grow in uneasiness.

“You are preoccupied,” continued Morrel; “you have need of something. Shall I call one of your people?

“Yes,” made Noirtier.

Morrel hung upon the bell-cord; but though he pulled till it broke, no one came.

He turned back toward Noirtier; pallor and anguish were increasing upon the old man's face.

“My God, my God!” said Morrel, “but why does no one come? Is someone ill in the house?”

Noirtier's eyes seemed ready to start from their sockets.

“But what ails you, then?” continued Morrel; “you frighten me. Valentine! Valentine!...

“Yes! yes!” made Noirtier.

Maximilien opened his mouth to speak, but his tongue could articulate no sound: he staggered and caught hold of the paneling.

Then he stretched his hand toward the door.

“Yes, yes, yes!” continued the old man.

Maximilien sprang by the small stair, which he cleared in two bounds, while Noirtier seemed to cry to him with his eyes:

“Faster! faster!”

A minute sufficed the young man to cross several rooms, solitary like the rest of the house, and to reach Valentine's own.

He had no need to push the door; it stood wide open.

A sob was the first sound he perceived. He saw, as through a cloud, a black figure kneeling and lost amid a confused heap of white draperies. Fear, frightful fear, nailed him to the threshold.

It was then that he heard a voice saying: “Valentine is dead,” and a second voice which, like an echo, answered:

“Dead! dead!”

“Stories of the world, in your language.”