Hearing the guttural rattle that accompanied these words, the warder bowed and went. Jacques Collin clung wildly to this hope; but when he saw the doctor and the governor come in together, he perceived that the attempt was abortive, and coolly awaited the upshot of the visit, holding out his wrist for the doctor to feel his pulse.
“The Abbe is feverish,” said the doctor to Monsieur Gault, “but it is the type of fever we always find in inculpated prisoners—and to me,” he added, in the governor’s ear, “it is always a sign of some degree of guilt.”
Just then the governor, to whom the public prosecutor had intrusted Lucien’s letter to be given to Jacques Collin, left the doctor and the prisoner together under the guard of the warder, and went to fetch the letter.
“Monsieur,” said Jacques Collin, seeing the warder outside the door, and not understanding why the governor had left them, “I should think nothing of thirty thousand francs if I might send five lines to Lucien de Rubempre.”
“I will not rob you of your money,” said Doctor Lebrun; “no one in this world can ever communicate with him again——”
“No one?” said the prisoner in amazement. “Why?”
“He has hanged himself——”
No tigress robbed of her whelps ever startled an Indian jungle with a yell so fearful as that of Jacques Collin, who rose to his feet as a tiger rears to spring, and fired a glance at the doctor as scorching as the flash of a falling thunderbolt. Then he fell back on the bed, exclaiming:
“Oh, my son!”
“Poor man!” said the doctor, moved by this terrific convulsion of nature.