He looked as pale as a ghost; and the white flannel dressing-gown which he had hastily thrown around him hung like a pall around his lean limbs. The first cry uttered by the countess had been heard by him on the bed on which he lay apparently dying. A terrible presentiment had seized him. He had risen from his bed, and, dragging himself slowly along, holding painfully to the balusters, he had come down.
“I have heard all,” he said, casting crushing looks at both the guilty ones.
The countess uttered a deep, hoarse sigh, and sank into a chair. But Jacques drew himself up, and said,—
“I have insulted you terribly, sir. Avenge yourself.”
The count shrugged his shoulders.
“Great God! You would allow me to be condemned for a crime which I have not committed. Ah, that would be the meanest cowardice.”
The count was so feeble that he had to lean against the door-post.
“Would it be cowardly?” he asked. “Then, what do you call the act of that miserable man who meanly, disgracefully robs another man of his wife, and palms off his own children upon him? It is true you are neither an incendiary nor an assassin. But what is fire in my house in comparison with the ruin of all my faith? What are the wounds in my body in comparison with that wound in my heart, which never can heal? I leave you to the court, sir.”
Jacques was terrified; he saw the abyss opening before him that was to swallow him up.
“Rather death,” he cried,—“death.”