“The good Sister Félicité. It is her room.”
“Can I see her?”
“Ah! non. She is ill, so very ill. She will not live long, cette pauvre soeur!”
I reflected. “Will you give her this paper without fail when I have written upon it what I wish?”
“Mais oui, Monsieur!”
In the presence of the two holy women standing with their hands devoutly crossed, and of the parrot whom I silenced as well as I could, and in truth I appeared to have some influence over the creature, I wrote the following upon a leaf torn out of my scratch-book: “To the Soeur Félicité. A gentleman who, if he has not made a great mistake, saw you once when you were Mdme. Martinetti, asks you now if in what may be your last moments, you have anything to tell, anything to declare, or anybody to pardon. He would also ask—what was done to the parrot? He, with his friend M. De Kock, were at your house in New York the night your husband disappeared.”
“Give her that,” said I to the waiting sister, “and I will come to see how she is to-morrow.”
That night, however, she died, and when I reached the nunnery next day it was only to be told that she had read my note and with infinite difficulty written an answer to it.
“I am sorry I should have perhaps hastened her end,” said I. “Before you give it to me, will you permit me to see her?”
“Mais oui, Monsieur, if monsieur will come this way.”