"Father!" she cried, clasping her hands appealingly, "what do you mean? You say that Giovanni is ill, but your look expresses more than your words! With what fearful malady has he been stricken? Tell me, I conjure you! I will be strong—I will bear it!"
"My child," said the Count, in a solemn tone, "then summon all your courage, all your firmness to your aid! Young Massetti, overwhelmed by his troubles, has fallen a prey to a mental disease!"
"Mon Dieu! mon Dieu!" groaned Zuleika, in anguish, "do you mean to say that he has lost his mind, that he is a lunatic?"
"Such, alas! is the case! But, my daughter, trust in me! I will find him and science will effect his cure!"
The poor girl, stunned by the terrible intelligence of her lover's condition, stood for an instant with her eyes stonily fixed upon her father. Tears refused to come to her relief. Then she tottered, staggered as if she had been suddenly struck with a heavy missile, and fell fainting into Valentine's outstretched arms. Maximilian assisted his wife to place her in a fauteuil, after which he seized the bell cord.
"For what are you going to ring?" asked Monte-Cristo, who had hurried to his daughter's side.
"For brandy," answered M. Morrel, his hand still on the cord. "It will revive her."
"Never mind the brandy," returned the Count, as he took a small vial containing a red-looking fluid from his pocket and, opening Zuleika's mouth, poured eight drops of the liquid down her throat. "This is the Abbé Faria's elixir, a potent remedy that never yet failed of effect! It will work like a charm! See! It is already doing its office!"
As he uttered these words Zuleika moved slightly in the fauteuil, then opened her eyes and gazed about her in bewilderment. Almost immediately, however, she realized that she had swooned and a full sense of her father's terrible though considerately made revelation returned to her. She buried her face in her hands, quivered from head to foot, and then the glistening drops trickling through her fingers told that the tears had at last come to calm her. Valentine bent over her, gently stroking her raven hair and endeavoring in a womanly way to soothe her, while the Count and Maximilian looked on with anxious countenances, waiting for Mme. Morrel's touch and influence to do their work.
Suddenly Zuleika removed her hands from her tear-bathed visage, straightened herself up in the fauteuil and, fixing her glance on Monte-Cristo, said, in a low, faint and gasping tone that betrayed the depth, the intensity, of her emotion: