“I have almost a mind to wish that you all were dead,” Valentin made answer, with a dark, inscrutable look at his boon companions.
“Dying people are frightfully cruel,” said Emile, laughing. “You are rich now,” he went on gravely; “very well, I will give you two months at most before you grow vilely selfish. You are so dense already that you cannot understand a joke. You have only to go a little further to believe in your Magic Skin.”
Raphael kept silent, fearing the banter of the company; but he drank immoderately, trying to drown in intoxication the recollection of his fatal power.
III. THE AGONY
In the early days of December an old man of some seventy years of age pursued his way along the Rue de Varenne, in spite of the falling rain. He peered up at the door of each house, trying to discover the address of the Marquis Raphael de Valentin, in a simple, childlike fashion, and with the abstracted look peculiar to philosophers. His face plainly showed traces of a struggle between a heavy mortification and an authoritative nature; his long, gray hair hung in disorder about a face like a piece of parchment shriveling in the fire. If a painter had come upon this curious character, he would, no doubt, have transferred him to his sketchbook on his return, a thin, bony figure, clad in black, and have inscribed beneath it: “Classical poet in search of a rhyme.” When he had identified the number that had been given to him, this reincarnation of Rollin knocked meekly at the door of a splendid mansion.
“Is Monsieur Raphael in?” the worthy man inquired of the Swiss in livery.
“My Lord the Marquis sees nobody,” said the servant, swallowing a huge morsel that he had just dipped in a large bowl of coffee.
“There is his carriage,” said the elderly stranger, pointing to a fine equipage that stood under the wooden canopy that sheltered the steps before the house, in place of a striped linen awning. “He is going out; I will wait for him.”
“Then you might wait here till to-morrow morning, old boy,” said the Swiss. “A carriage is always waiting for monsieur. Please to go away. If I were to let any stranger come into the house without orders, I should lose an income of six hundred francs.”