Some evil thought triumphed in him for the moment, but he instantly imposed silence upon it, and, completely transformed, puffing out his cheeks as if his head were filled with water, he sighed profoundly as he pressed the old nobleman's hands:
"Poor duke! Poor duke! Ah! my friend, I am in despair."
"Have a care, Jenkins," said Monpavon coldly, withdrawing his hands. "You are assuming a terrible responsibility. What! the duke is as ill as you say, ps—ps—ps. See no one? No consultation?"
The Irishman threw up his arms as if to say: "What's the use?"
The other insisted. It was absolutely essential that Brisset, Jousselin, Bouchereau, all the great men should be called in.
"But you will frighten him to death."
Monpavon inflated his breast, the old foundered charger's only pride.
"My dear fellow, if you had seen Mora and myself in the trenches at Constantine—ps—ps—Never lowered our eyes—Don't know what fear means. Send word to your confrères, I will undertake to prepare him."
The consultation took place that evening behind closed doors, the duke having demanded that it be kept secret through a curious feeling of shame because of his illness, because of the suffering that dethroned him and reduced him to the level of other men. Like those African kings who conceal themselves in the depths of their palaces to die, he would have liked the world to believe that he had been taken away, transfigured, had become a god. Then, too, above all, he dreaded the compassion, the condolence, the emotion with which he knew that his pillow would be surrounded, the tears that would be shed, because he would suspect that they were insincere, and because, if sincere, they would offend him even more by their grimacing ugliness.
He had always detested scenes, exaggerated sentiments, whatever was likely to move him, to disturb the harmonious equilibrium of his life. Everybody about him was aware of it and the orders were to keep at a distance all the cases of distress, all the despairing appeals that were made to Mora from one end of France to the other, as to one of those houses of refuge in the forest in which a light shines at night and at which all those who have lost their way apply for shelter. Not that he was hard to the unfortunate, perhaps indeed he felt that he was too readily susceptible to pity, which he regarded as an inferior sentiment, a weakness unworthy of the strong, and for the same reason that he denied it to others, dreaded it for himself, lest it impair his courage. So that no one in the palace, save Monpavon and Louis the valet, knew the purpose of the visit of those three persons who were mysteriously ushered into the presence of the Minister of State. Even the duchess herself was in ignorance. Separated from her husband by all the barriers that life in the most exalted political and social circles places between the husband and wife in such exceptional establishments, she supposed that he was slightly indisposed, ill mainly in his imagination, and had so little suspicion of an impending catastrophe that, at the very hour when the physicians were ascending the half-darkened grand staircase, her private apartments at the other end of the palace were brilliantly illuminated for an informal dancing-party, one of those white balls which the ingenuity of idle Paris was just beginning to introduce.