He had just left the bath, and enveloped himself in a robe de chambre, when Otto handed him a letter from the duchess.
He hastily broke the seal and read:
“You are safe. You know all. I am dying. Farewell. I loved you.”
With two bounds he reached his wife’s apartments. The door was locked; he burst it open. Too late!
Mme. Blanche was dead—poisoned, like Marie-Anne; but she had procured a drug whose effect was instantaneous; and extended upon her couch, clad in her wonted apparel, her hands folded upon her breast, she seemed only asleep.
A tear glittered in Martial’s eye.
“Poor, unhappy woman!” he murmured; “may God forgive you as I forgive you—you whose crime has been so frightfully expiated here below!”
EPILOGUE
THE FIRST SUCCESS
Safe, in his own princely mansion, and surrounded by an army of retainers, the Duc de Sairmeuse triumphantly exclaimed: