Laisangy, who was becoming greatly bored by the part he was playing, supposed that Carmen would dismiss the servants and remain with him herself; but she had quite other plans. She bade the men undress their master and put him in his bed. Laisangy was ready to swear at her, but, of course, he was too ill to dispute. If he suddenly revived and made a row, then the story would get about of the ridiculous comedy he had played. His patience was not long tried, however. Carmen only wanted to gain a little time, in which she might hope to discover the contents of a letter which she saw the banker receive and put in his pocket early in the evening. She found the letter and retired into the next room to read it.
"Vengeance is assured. Fanfar and Goutran are prisoners in the house of Monte-Cristo. As to the girl, she is at the house at Courberrie, where Esperance will arrive too late."
Hardly had Carmen grasped the sense of these words than she ran to her room, and wrapping herself in her long black cloak, left the hôtel by the private door.
CHAPTER LXIV.
THE PLOT.
We left Esperance in the house at Courberrie just when the panels had been thrown open. He uttered a cry of horror. What did he see? Around a table covered with glasses sat a number of women singing drunken songs, and among these women sat one pale as a ghost, and this one was Jane!
Ah! poor child! Of what terrible machination was she the victim?
Benedetto, who required her as a tool for his vengeance, had carried her through the subterranean passage, she all the time entirely unconscious. He laid her on a sofa, and stood with folded arms looking down upon her. Did he feel the smallest emotion of pity? No, not he! He was only asking himself if the girl was so attractive that Esperance would really feel her loss as much as his enemies wished. Suddenly she sighed—a long, strange, fluttering sigh. Benedetto leaned over her anxiously. What if she were to die now! He must hasten. Everything had been arranged. He opened her teeth with the blade of a knife, and poured down her throat a few drops of a clear white liquor. It was an anesthetic whose terrible properties he well understood. Jane would see, Jane would hear, and Jane would suffer, but as she could neither speak nor move—all resistance would be impossible. And, that night she was carried to the house at Courberrie, what terrible agony she suffered! She knew that she was in the power of an enemy, that she had been torn from him whom she loved better than life, and from whose lips she had just heard oaths of eternal fidelity. With a heart swelling with agony she could not utter a sound. Her soul was alive, but her body was motionless. Suddenly the room in which she lay was brilliantly illuminated. A crowd of women came pouring in—and such women! My readers who remember Jane's past can readily imagine that the girl regarded this scene as a hideous dream. She even fancied that she saw her mother.