"Not at all! not at all!" replied the lover. "Her education, as far as learning and accomplishments go, will shame the whole court, and her manners are those of a princess of Eldorado. Why, I told you, she has been brought up all her life by the Countess de Bigorre."
It may easily be supposed that such words did not tend to calm the beating of my heart; and in the agitation caused by thus suddenly discovering that Helen was the subject of their conversation, I lost what passed next. In a moment after, however, the lover replied to some question of his companion. "I do not very well know why her father took her away from the Countess and brought her to Paris; I should have supposed that it would have been much more convenient to him in every respect to have left her where she was. However, I am his most humble and very obedient servant, for I should never have seen her otherwise; and marry her I will, if I should carry her off for it."
"But her birth, Charles, her birth!" said his companion. "What will your uncle think of that?--he who is so proud of his own."
"Oh!" replied the hot-brained youth, "you know I can do anything with my uncle; and besides, this father of hers has been quietly accumulating a large fortune, it seems, one way or another; and so that must cover the sin of her birth in my uncle's eyes. But say what you will, or what he will, or what any one will, I will marry her if I live to be a year older."
"What! and discharge the little Epingliere, Jeannette?" asked his companion, with a laugh.
"Oh, that does not follow," answered the other; "'tis always well to have two strings to one's bow; and Jeannette is too charming to be parted with for these three years at least: but madame ma femme will know nothing of mademoiselle ma bonne amie, and I shall find her proud beauty the more delightful by contrasting it with the more modest charms of Jeannette."
"The more simple charms, you mean, not the more modest," replied his companion; "I never heard that Jeannette was famous for her modesty!"
The opium draught which I had taken, counteracted in its effects by the pain of my body, and the irritation of my mind, began to make me somewhat delirious. Strange shapes seemed flitting about my bed--I saw faces looking at me out of the darkness, and insulting me with fiendish grins. At the same time, the light way in which the weak young man in the next chamber spoke of Helen--of my sweet, my beautiful Helen--worked me up to a pitch of frantic rage, which, mingling with the delirium of opium, made me resolve to get up and avenge her upon the spot. I accordingly raised myself in bed, and after sitting upright for a moment or two, with my brain seeming to whirl like the eddy of a stream, I got out with infinite difficulty, when the cold air, and the chill of the stones to my feet, in some degree recalled me to my senses, and instead of groping for my sword, as I intended, I returned towards my bed; but coming upon it sooner than I had expected, I struck it with my knee, fell over upon it, and, with the sort of despairing heedlessness of fever and wretchedness, lay still where I had fallen, till the opium overpowering me, I lost all recollection of my misery in a deep and deathlike slumber.
It was late ere I woke, and when I did so, it was with one of those dreadful headachs, which seem to benumb every faculty of the mind and body; while at the same time, the bruises all over my left side were even more sensitively painful than the night before.
The first thing I heard was a woman's voice, inquiring how I found myself; and looking round, I perceived a good-looking, fattish nun, of one of the charitable sisterhoods, sitting in a chair by my bedside. She seemed one of those good dames who attach themselves to great families, and act as an inferior sort of almoner, performing the part of charitable go-betweens; attending the sick servants with somewhat more skill than an apothecary, and more attention than a physician; serving as head nurse to the lady of the mansion, and acquiring much consequence with the poor, by dispensing the bounty of the rich.