She was screaming as much for her own relief as her lover's, as he was suffocating her in his convulsive embrace.
It seemed to be Death trying to drag her into the grave.
Jean ran to rouse Dr. Gilbert while Deutsch got his master to a couch. In ten minutes the doctor drove up.
"What is it now?" he asked of Deutsch, in the hall.
"That woman again and the cursed flowers! Come and see."
At this moment something like a sob was heard; Gilbert, ran up the stairs at the top step of which a door opened, and a woman in a white wrapper ran out suddenly and fell at the doctor's feet.
"Oh, Gilbert," she screamed, "save him!"
"Nicole Legay," cried the doctor; "was it you, wretch, who have killed him?" A dreadful thought overwhelmed him. "I saw her bully Beausire selling broadsides against Mirabeau, and she became his mistress. He is undoubtedly lost, for Cagliostro set himself against him."
He turned back into his patient's room, fully aware that no time was to be lost. Indeed, he was too versed in secrets of his craft still to hope, far less to preserve any doubt. In the body before his eyes, it was impossible to see the living Mirabeau. From that time, his face assumed the solemn cast of great men dying.
Meanwhile the news had spread that there was a relapse and that the doom impended. Then could it be judged what a gigantic place one man may fill among his fellows. The entire city was stirred as on great calamities. The door was besieged by persons of all opinions as though everybody knew they had something to lose by his loss.