The door was hardly shut upon Noel when Charlotte was installed on the divan near her mistress. Had the advocate been listening at the door, he might have heard Madame Juliette saying, “No, really, I can no longer endure him. What a bore he is, my girl. Ah! if I was not so afraid of him, wouldn’t I leave him at once? But he is capable of killing me!”
The girl vainly tried to defend Noel; but her mistress did not listen. She murmured, “Why does he absent himself, and what is he plotting? An absence of eight days is suspicious. Can he by any chance intend to be married? Ah! if I only knew. You weary me to death, my good Noel, and I am determined to leave you to yourself one of these fine mornings; but I cannot permit you to quit me first. Supposing he is going to get married? But I will not allow it. I must make inquiries.”
Noel, however, was not listening at the door. He went along the Rue de Provence as quickly as possible, gained the Rue St. Lazare, and entered the house as he had departed, by the stable door. He had but just sat down in his study, when the servant knocked.
“Sir,” cried she, “in heaven’s name answer me!”
He opened the door and said impatiently, “What is it?”
“Sir,” stammered the girl in tears, “this is the third time I have knocked, and you have not answered. Come, I implore you. I am afraid madame is dying!”
He followed her to Madame Gerdy’s room. He must have found the poor woman terribly changed, for he could not restrain a movement of terror. The invalid struggled painfully beneath her coverings. Her face was of a livid paleness, as though there was not a drop of blood left in her veins; and her eyes, which glittered with a sombre light, seemed filled with a fine dust. Her hair, loose and disordered, falling over her cheeks and upon her shoulders, contributed to her wild appearance. She uttered from time to time a groan hardly audible, or murmured unintelligible words. At times, a fiercer pang than the former ones forced a cry of anguish from her. She did not recognise Noel.
“You see, sir,” said the servant.
“Yes. Who would have supposed her malady could advance so rapidly? Quick, run to Dr. Herve’s, tell him to get up, and to come at once, tell him it is for me.” And he seated himself in an arm-chair, facing the suffering woman.
Dr. Herve was one of Noel’s friends, an old school-fellow, and the companion of his student days. The doctor’s history differed in nothing from that of most young men, who, without fortune, friends, or influence, enter upon the practice of the most difficult, the most hazardous of professions that exist in Paris, where one sees so many talented young doctors forced, to earn their bread, to place themselves at the disposition of infamous drug vendors. A man of remarkable courage and self-reliance, Herve, his studies over, said to himself, “No, I will not go and bury myself in the country, I will remain in Paris, I will there become celebrated. I shall be surgeon-in-chief of an hospital, and a knight of the Legion of Honour.”