"No."
Next morning the faces of the "wise ravens" were very gloomy. Those who flew in from the neighborhood, and those who came from a distance took on more and more that mysterious solemnity which reminds one of death-bells.
But Darvid waited yet; he did not lay down his arms; he did not lose faith in the power of the good giantess. He waited for a new reinforcement. This was the greatest medical name in all Europe, that of a man who had the fame almost of one who worked miracles. Here again was a mountain of gold, and of intellect piled up, the highest mountain among all of them. In the blue drawing-room a suppressed, many-tongued murmur was heard. Servants bore about food and drink. Darvid gave cigars to his worthy guests, the most worthy of all, he who had just arrived; listened with close attention to the explanation of his colleagues touching the case before which he was to find himself. At last, calm, and perfectly correct, with a pleasant smile on his lips, a smile almost of triumph, Darvid indicated with a gesture full of welcome the door of his daughter's chamber. The most famous of the famous entered first, and stopped some steps from the threshold; behind him stopped the others. On the parched lips of the sick girl appeared ruby-like drops of blood; her eyes were opened very widely; to her forehead, which was damp from perspiration, some slender locks of pale, yellow hair adhered. Throughout the room sounded in an audible, hoarse whisper:
"Ira! Ira!"
Irene approached quickly, and, bending over, removed, delicately, with a thin handkerchief, the liquid rubies from the lips of her sister.
"What do you want, little one; what do you wish?"
Cara fixed on her sister eyes in which something uncommon had begun to take place, for the dark pupils became larger every moment, and larger, more prominent, they seemed to grow and to swell, as if concentrating into one point all power of vision, until a glassy film began to come down over them, and at the same time her lips, sprinkled with blood, moved a number of times wishing to pronounce something and not being able. At last, fixing on her sister from behind the glassy film the sight of her swollen pupils, Cara, as if in sign that she understood, shook her head, and with a whisper which was heard through the room with a note of alarm and complaint, she said:
"Pain-ted pots!"
Then in her breast a great orchestra began to play: hoarse, discordant, wheezing, and her head, grown suddenly heavy, fell into the pillow deeply. Prom the assembly of men standing there at the door, the most famous, the small sprightly, iron-gray Frenchman, with a face greatly thoughtful, advanced a few steps, stood at the bedside, and after some minutes, with his hands resting on the laboring bosom, cast into the deep silence which possessed the room these words:
"The agony!"