LITMIR.BIZ

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I kept hid under the bolster. Ah, you ask how I could have done all this without your suspecting it, or without being seen by any of the servants. Know that hate is stronger than love, be sure that I have left nothing to chance, nor have I forgotten anything.”

      Hector and Bertha looked at Sauvresy with a dull, fixed gaze. They forced themselves to understand him, but could scarcely do so.

      “Let’s finish,” resumed the dying man, “my strength is waning. This very morning, the bottle containing the poison I have preserved, our biographies, and the narrative of my poisoning, have been put in the hands of a trustworthy and devoted person, whom, even if you knew him, you could not corrupt. He does not know the contents of what has been confided to him. The day that you get married this friend will give them all up to you. If, however, you are not married in a year from to-day, he has instructions to put these papers and this bottle into the hands of the officers of the law.”

      A double cry of horror and anguish told Sauvresy that he had well chosen his vengeance.

      “And reflect,” added he, “that this package once delivered up to justice, means the galleys, if not the scaffold for both of you.”

      Sauvresy had overtasked his strength. He fell panting upon the bed, his mouth open, his eyes filmy, and his features so distorted that he seemed to be on the point of death. But neither Bertha nor Tremorel thought of trying to relieve him. They remained opposite each other with dilated eyes, stupefied, as if their thoughts were bent upon the torments of that future which the implacable vengeance of the man whom they had outraged imposed upon them. They were indissolubly united, confounded in a common destiny; nothing could separate them but death. A chain stronger and harder than that of the galley-slave bound them together; a chain of infamies and crimes, of which the first link was a kiss, and the last a murder by poison. Now Sauvresy might die; his vengeance was on their heads, casting a cloud upon their sun. Free in appearance, they would go through life crushed by the burden of the past, more slaves than the blacks in the American rice-fields. Separated by mutual hate and contempt, they saw themselves riveted together by the common terror of punishment, condemned to an eternal embrace.

      Bertha at this moment admired her husband. Now that he was so feeble that he breathed as painfully as an infant, she looked upon him as something superhuman. She had had no idea of such constancy and courage allied with so much dissimulation and genius. How cunningly he had found them out! How well he had known how to avenge himself! To be the master, he had only to will it. In a certain way she rejoiced in the strange atrocity of this scene; she felt something like a bitter pride in being one of the actors in it. At the same time she was transported with rage and sorrow in thinking that she had had this man in her power, that he had been at her feet. She almost loved him. Of all men, it was he whom she would have chosen were she mistress of her destinies; and he was going to escape her.

      Tremorel, while these strange ideas crowded upon Bertha’s mind, began to come to himself. The certainty that Laurence was now forever lost for him occurred to him, and his despair was without bounds. The silence continued a full quarter of an hour. Sauvresy at last subdued the spasm which had exhausted him, and spoke.

      “I have not said all yet,” he commenced.

      His voice was as feeble as a murmur, and yet it seemed terrible to his hearers.

      “You shall see whether I have reckoned and foreseen well. Perhaps, when I was dead, the idea of flying and going abroad would strike you. I shall not permit that. You must stay at Orcival—at Valfeuillu. A—friend—not he with the package—is charged, without knowing the reason for it, with the task of watching you. Mark well what I say—if either of you should disappear for eight days, on the ninth, the man who has the package would receive a letter which would cause him to resort at once to the police.”

      Yes, he had foreseen all, and Tremorel, who had already thought of flight, was overwhelmed.

      “I have so arranged, besides, that the idea of flight shall not tempt you too much. It is true I have left all my fortune to Bertha, but I only give her the use of it; the property itself will not be hers until the day after your marriage.”

      Bertha made a gesture of repugnance which her husband misinterpreted.

      “You are thinking of the copy of my will which is in your possession. It is a useless one, and I only added to it some valueless words because I wanted to put your suspicions to sleep. My true will is in the notary’s hands, and bears a date two days later. I can read you the rough draft of it.”

      He took a sheet of paper from a portfolio which was concealed; like the revolver, under the bolster, and read:

      “Being stricken with a fatal malady, I here set down freely, and in the fulness of my faculties, my last wishes:

      “My dearest wish is that my well-beloved widow, Bertha, should espouse, as soon as the delay enjoined by law has expired, my dear friend, the Count Hector de Tremorel. Having appreciated the grandeur of soul and nobleness of sentiment which belong to my wife and friend, I know that they are worthy of each other, and that each will be happy in the other. I die the more peacefully, as I leave my Bertha to a protector whose—”

      It was impossible for Bertha to hear more.

      “For pity’s sake,” cried she, “enough.”

      “Enough? Well, let it be so,” responded Sauvresy. “I have read this paper to you to show you that while I have arranged everything to insure the execution of my will; I have also done all that can preserve to you the world’s respect. Yes, I wish that you should be esteemed and honored, for it is you alone upon whom I rely for my vengeance. I have knit around you a net-work which you can never burst asunder. You triumph; my tombstone shall be, as you hoped, the altar of your nuptials, or else—the galleys.”

      Tremorel’s pride at last revolted against so many humiliations, so many whip-strokes lashing his face.

      “You have only forgotten one thing, Sauvresy; that a man can die.”

      “Pardon me,” replied the sick man, coldly. “I have foreseen that also, and was just going to tell you so. Should one of you die suddenly before the marriage, the police will be called in.”

      “You misunderstood me; I meant that a man can kill himself.”

      “You kill yourself? Humph! Jenny, who disdains you almost as much as I do, has told me about your threats to kill yourself. You! See here; here is my revolver; shoot yourself, and I will forgive my wife!”

      Hector made a gesture of anger, but did not take the pistol.

      “You see,” said Sauvresy, “I knew it well. You are afraid.” Turning to Bertha, he added, “This is your lover.”

      Extraordinary situations like this are so unwonted and strange that the actors in them almost always remain composed and natural, as if stupefied. Bertha, Hector, and Sauvresy accepted, without taking note of it, the strange position in which they found themselves; and they talked naturally, as if of matters of every-day life, and not of terrible events. But the hours flew, and Sauvresy perceived his life to be ebbing from him.

      “There only remains one more act to play,” said he. “Hector, go and call the servants, have those who have gone to bed aroused, I want to see them before dying.”

      Tremorel hesitated.

      “Come, go along; or shall I ring, or fire a pistol to bring them here?”

      Hector went out; Bertha remained alone with her husband—alone! She had a hope that perhaps she might succeed in making him change his purpose, and that she might obtain his forgiveness. She knelt beside the bed. Never had she been so beautiful, so seductive, so irresistible. The keen emotions of the evening had brought her whole soul into her face, and her lovely eyes supplicated, her breast heaved, her mouth was held out as if for a kiss, and her new-born passion for Sauvresy burst out into delirium.

      “Clement,” she stammered, in a voice full of tenderness, “my husband, Clement!”

      He directed toward her a glance of hatred.

      “What

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