"Ask no questions. Go. Hangdog I Go, I say. And come not back until you bring me news that the carriage is prepared. Go, beast!"
"The horses, Monsieur; the coachman! He sleeps----"
But there the valet stopped. Desparre's eyes were on him. He was afraid. Therefore he went, murmuring that Monsieur should be obeyed.
Left alone, Desparre still sat on for some moments in his chair, listless and motionless. Then, slowly, he raised himself by using his hands upon the arms of the chair as levers; he stood erect upon his feet. He tried his legs, too, and found he could walk, though heavily and with a feeling as if he had two senseless columns of lead beneath him instead of limbs. Still, he could walk.
"The second time," he muttered to himself, as he did so. "The second time. What--what did the physician tell me? What? That, if the first stroke did not kill neither would the second, but that--that the third was certain, unfailing. If that could not be avoided, all was lost. All! No longer any hope. This is the second, when will the third come? When? Perhaps--when I stand face to face with her again. With Cidalise! My God! When she blasts me to death with one look. Cidalise! Laure!"
He resumed his seat, resumed, too, his dejected musings.
"It was well done. Fool that I am never to have remembered that Diane was implacable. Cidalise! Ha! I recollect. It was my pet name for the woman I left behind in Paris when hastily summoned away. I loved that woman. She--she--Diane must have known--have taken the child, have reared it. And I should have married her--my own child! Oh, God! that such awful, impious vengeance could be conceived. That, having found out how, all unknowing, I loved the girl, she--she--she--that merciless devil--would have stood by and let me marry her--my child. My own child. The child of Cidalise."
Again he sat back in his chair. To an onlooker it would have seemed as though it was still a statue sitting there before him. Yet he was musing always and revolving horrible matter in his mind.
"Baulked thus," he reflected; "she evolved this scheme of revenge to expose me to all. To tell me, too, that I have consigned my own child to a living death, to exile in a savage land, to the chain gang. And, I have gloated over it, not knowing. Not knowing! I have pictured the woman whom I deemed to have outraged me as trudging those weary leagues with the carcan round her neck, the chains about her limbs. And she was my own child! My own child! My own child!"
Again he paused, thinking now of what lay before him. Of what he had to do. What was it? Yes, he remembered his orders for the carriage to be prepared. He had to hasten to Marseilles at once, as fast as that coach (known as a "berceuse"), as that luxurious sleeping carriage could be got there, and then to intercept the cordon of women who were to be deported; to find her, to save her. And--and--and, if they had already reached that city and left for New France--if they had sailed--what to do next? What? Why, to follow in the first vessel that went. To save her! To save her! To save her if she had not fallen dead by the roadside, as he knew, as all France knew, the women and the men did often enough fall dead on those awful journeys.