“My eternal misery!” exclaimed Marguerite. “The marriage, then, shall not take place.”
“I have pledged your word and mine,” said the marchioness, and with the more energy, that she felt her influence over her husband about to escape her.
“This marriage, I tell you, shall not take place!” replied the marquis, in a tone louder than that of his wife. “It is too dreadful a thing,” continued he, in a gloomy sepulchral tone, “to be permitted. A marriage in which a wife loves not her husband—why, it causes madness! As to myself, the marchioness has always loved me, and loved me faithfully—that which drove me mad—oh! that was a different matter.”
A flash of diabolical joy shot from the eyes of the marchioness, for she at once saw from the violence of the expressions used by her husband, and the terror depicted on his features, that his insanity was about to return.
“This contract,” said the marquis, and he raised it in his hands as if about to tear it.
The marchioness eagerly caught his hand. Marguerite appeared to be hanging by a thread between heaven and hell.
“That which drives me mad!” reiterated the marquis, “is a tomb which widely opens, a spectre that issues from the earth, it is a phantom that speaks to me, and says—”
“Your life is in my hands!” murmured the marchioness in his ear, repeating the last words of the dying Morlaix: “I could take it.”
“Do you hear that?” cried the marquis, rising, and as if about to rush from the room.
“My father! oh! my father! recall your senses; there is no tomb, there is no spectre, there is no phantom; those words were uttered by the marchioness.”