He rose from his chair, and remained standing till Dominique left the room. The tone of his last words had wellnigh crushed hope in the young man's bosom. But as long as a possibility remained, the student pursued it. He betook himself to the Procureur du Roi, whose office constituted him public prosecutor in cases of this kind. That functionary declared himself incompetent, until the prisoner should have undergone another examination. Until then, the only appeal from the judge was to the minister of justice. Dominique instantly drew up and forwarded a petition; but before it reached Paris, his mother breathed her last. She met her death, preceded and attended by acute sufferings, with the resignation of a martyr. But even after the last sacrament of her religion had been administered, and when she earnestly strove to fix her mind on eternity, to the exclusion of things temporal, the thought of her husband, so long and tenderly beloved, and absent at this supreme hour, intruded itself upon her pious meditations, brought tears to her eyes, and drew heartrending sobs from her bosom; her last sigh was for him, her latest breath uttered his name. This fervent desire, so cruelly thwarted, those tears of deferred hope and final profound disappointment, were inexpressibly painful to contemplate. Upon Dominique, whose love for his mother was so deep and holy, they made a violent impression. Bitter were his feelings as he sat beside her couch when the spirit had fled, and gazed upon her clay-cold features, whereon there yet lingered a grieved and suffering expression. And later, when the earth had received her into its bosom, that pallid and sorrowful countenance was ever before his eyes. In his dreams he heard his mother's well-known voice, mournfully pronouncing the name of her beloved husband, and praying, as she had done in the last hours of her life, that she might again behold him before she departed. Nor were these visions dissipated by daylight. They recurred to his excited imagination, and kindled emotions of fierce hatred towards the man who had had it in his power to smooth his mother's passage from life to death, and who had wantonly refused the alleviation. Nay more; convinced of his father's innocence, Dominique considered the judge who had thrown him into prison as in some sort his mother's murderer. He had accelerated her decease, and thrown gall into the cup it is the lot of every mortal to drain. The physicians had declared anxiety of mind to be the immediate cause of her death. Dominique brooded over this declaration, and over the misfortunes that had so suddenly overtaken him, until he came to consider M. Noell as much an assassin as if he had struck a dagger into his mother's heart. "What matter," he thought, "whether the wound be dealt to body or to soul, so long as it slays?" He had nothing to distract his thoughts from dwelling upon and magnifying the wrongs that had deprived him of both parents, one by death, the other by an imprisonment whose termination he could not foresee. At times his melancholy was broken by bursts of fury against him he deemed the cause of his misfortunes.
"Could I but see him die!" he would exclaim, "the cold-blooded heartless tyrant—die alone, childless, accursed, without a friendly hand to wipe the death-sweat from his face! Then, methinks, I could again be happy, when his innocent victim was thus revenged. Alas, my mother!—my poor, meek, long-suffering mother,—must your death go unrequited? For what offence was your life taken as atonement? By what vile distortion of justice did this base inquisitor visit upon your innocent head a transgression that never was committed?"
Meanwhile the captivity of the elder Lafon was prolonged. A second examination relaxed nothing of his jailor's severity, and his son's applications to see him were all rejected. Dominique wrote to his father, but he received no answer; and he afterwards learned that his letter had not been delivered when sent, but had been detained by Noell, who, finding nothing criminatory in its contents, had subjected it, with characteristic suspicion, to chemical processes, in hopes to detect writing with sympathetic ink, and had finally made it accessory to an attempt to extort a confession from the prisoner. This information, obtained from an understrapper of the prison by means of a large bribe, raised Dominique's exasperation to the highest pitch.
"Gracious Heaven!" he exclaimed, "are such things to be endured in silence and submission? Has human justice iron scourges for nominal offences,—honours and rewards for real crimes? On a false accusation my father pines in a dungeon, whilst my mother's murderer walks scatheless and exalted amongst his fellows; but if the laws of man are impotent to avenge her death, who shall blame her son for remembering her dying agony, and requiting it on those who aggravated her sufferings?"
And he walked forth, pondering vengeance. Unconsciously his steps took the direction of the prison. Long he stood, with folded arms and lowering brow, gazing at the small grated aperture that gave light and air to his father's cell, and hoping to see his beloved parent look out and recognise him. He gazed in vain: twilight came, night followed, no one appeared at the window. Dominique knew not that it was high above the prisoner's reach. He returned home, fancying his father ill, nourishing a thousand bitter thoughts, and heaping up fresh hatred against the author of so much misery. That night Michel, the old servant, came twice to his room door, to see what ailed him, since, instead of retiring to rest, he unceasingly paced the apartment. Dominique dismissed the faithful fellow to his bed, and resumed his melancholy walk. But in the morning he was so pale and haggard that Michel slipped out to ask the family physician to call in by accident. When he returned, Dominique had left the house. In great alarm—for his young master's gloomy despondency at once suggested fear of suicide—Michel tracked his steps. His fears proved unfounded. With some trouble he ascertained that Dominique had quitted the town on the top of a passing diligence, with a valise for sole baggage, and without informing any one of the object of his journey.
THE DOUBLE DUEL.
Antony Noell, the judge, had three children, and report lied not when it said that he was tenderly attached to them. A harsh and unfeeling man in his official capacity, and in the ordinary affairs of life, all the softer part of his nature seemed to have resolved itself into paternal affection. His two sons were students at the university of Toulouse; his youngest child, a blooming maiden of twelve, still brightened his home and made his heart joyful, although she soon was to leave him to finish her education in a convent. The two students were gay handsome lads, but somewhat dissipated; fonder of the bottle and the billiard-room than of grave lectures and dry studies. They were in small favour with their pedagogues, but in high repute with their fellow collegians; whilst peaceable citizens and demure young ladies regarded them with mingled aversion, interest, and curiosity, on account of certain mad pranks, by which, during their first half-year's residence, they had gained a certain notoriety in the quiet city of Toulouse.
It happened one night, as the brothers came both flushed with play and wine from their accustomed coffeehouse on the Place du Capitole, that Vincent, the elder of the two, stumbled over the feet of a man who sat upon one of the benches placed outside the establishment. The passage through the benches and tables was narrow; and the stranger, having thrust his legs nearly across it, had little reason to complain of the trifling offence offered him. Nevertheless he jumped to his feet and fiercely taxed young Noell with an intentional insult. Noell, full of good humour and indifferent wine, and taking his interlocutor for a fellow student, made a jesting reply, and seizing one of the stranger's arms, whilst his brother Martial grasped the other, dragged him into the lamp-light to see who he was. But the face they beheld was unknown to them; and scarcely had they obtained a glimpse at it when its owner shook them off, applying to them at the same time a most injurious epithet. The students would have struck him, but he made a pace backwards, and, seizing a heavy chair which he whirled over his head as though it had been a feather, he swore he would dash out the brains of the first who laid a finger on him.
"I do not fight like a water-carrier," he said, "with fists and feet; but if you are as ready with your swords as you are with your insolence, you shall not long await satisfaction."
And offering a card, which was at once accepted, he received two in return. The disputants then separated; and as soon as the Noells turned out of the square, they paused beneath a lamp to examine the card they had received. Inscribed upon it was the name of Dominique Lafon.