At the shriek which the princess uttered, Lorenzo, who was always hovering about us like a bird of evil omen, entered the room, I know not how; and Leoni, taking him into a corner, showed him the viscount's letter. When they came back to us, the marquis was very calm, and had a mocking smile on his lips, as usual; while Leoni, intensely agitated, seemed to question him with his eyes as if to ask his advice.
The princess was still unconscious in my arms. The marquis shrugged his shoulders.
"Your wife is intolerably stupid," he said, so loud that I overheard him. "Her presence here now will have the worst possible effect. Send her away; tell her to go for help. I will take everything on myself."
"But what will you do?" said Leoni, in great anxiety.
"Never fear. I have had an expedient all ready for a long while; it's a paper that I always have about me. But send Juliette away."
Leoni asked me to call the servants. I obeyed, and laid the princess's head gently on a cushion. But just as I was passing through the door, some undefinable magnetic force stopped me and made me turn. I saw the marquis approach the invalid as if to assist her; but his face seemed so wicked and Leoni's so pale, that I was afraid to leave the dying woman alone with them. Heaven knows what vague ideas passed through my brain. I hastened to the bed and, glancing at Leoni in terror, I said: "Beware! beware!"—"Of what?" he replied, with an air of amazement. In truth I did not know myself, and I was ashamed of the species of madness I had shown. The marquis's ironical air completed my discomfiture. I went out and returned a moment later with the princess's women and the physician. He found the princess suffering from a terrible nervous spasm, and said that we must try to make her swallow a spoonful of her sedative mixture at once. We tried in vain to force her teeth apart.
"Let the signora try it," said one of the women, pointing to me; "the princess won't take anything from anybody else, and never refuses what she gives her."
I did try, and the dying woman readily yielded. Through force of habit she pressed my hand feebly as she returned the spoon to me; then she violently threw up her arms, raised herself as if she were about to jump out of bed, and fell back dead on her pillow.
This sudden death made a terrible impression on me; I fainted and was carried from the room. I was ill several days, and, when I returned to life, Leoni informed me that I was thenceforth in my own house; that the will had been opened and found unassailable in every respect; that we were the possessors of a handsome fortune and a magnificent palace.
"I owe it all to you, Juliette," he said, "and, more than that, I owe it to you that I am able to think without shame or remorse of our friend's last moments. Your delicacy, your angelic goodness, encompassed them with attentions and lessened their melancholy. She died in your arms, that rival whom any other woman than you would have strangled; and you wept for her as if she were your sister! You are good! too good, too good! Now enjoy the fruit of your courage; see how happy I am to be rich and to be able to surround you once more with all the luxury that you crave."