“No, no; I am not one of those men whom love alone can suffice—stripped of all that outwardly adorns and adds to its value. In short, think of me as you please, Adelardi, but I do not resemble in the least my companion in misfortune you have just referred to. No human affection could make me endure the life I lead here; judge how it would be elsewhere.”
He rose, and began again to walk around in an excited manner. Adelardi remained silently absorbed in anxious, painful thoughts. George soon resumed, in a kind of fury: “Here, Adelardi, speak to me only of one thing; give me only one hope—death! death! that is all I desire.” And touching, with a gesture of despair, the black cravat negligently fastened around his neck, he said, in a hoarse voice: “This will be a last resort, if in a week I do not succeed in finding some means more worthy of a gentleman of escaping from their hands.”
His friend preserved a gloomy silence. What could he say? What reply could he make at a time when every earthly hope failed, and there was none felt in heaven? Adelardi was now fully conscious; he had a lively sense of what was wanting. He was born in a land where the impressions of childhood are always religious, and the longest period of indifference or forgetfulness seldom effaces them completely from the soul in which they were profoundly graven in early life.
“My dear friend,” said he, with a melancholy gravity not habitual to him, “to be of service to you at such a time, I feel I should be different from what I am. Yes, George; in the fearful temptation that now besets you, in your despair in view of the frightful lot that awaits you, there is only one resource, and but one. I feel unworthy of suggesting the only remedy.” His voice faltered, as he continued, with emotion: “George, you must believe—you must pray.”
George was for a moment surprised and affected. After a pause, which neither seemed disposed to interrupt, he said, in a softened tone: “Well, Adelardi, let it at least be permissible, in praying, to implore a favor not refused to a man more guilty than I: Fabiano is dying.”
“I know he cannot recover from his wound.”
“But perhaps he would not be in immediate danger had he not been violently attacked with typhus fever the day before yesterday. I hoped something myself from the contagion; but, doubtless afraid of shortening our heavy chain, they sent him last night to die at a hospital, I know not where.”
At that moment the bolt flew back, the hour had elapsed, and they were obliged to separate, but with an effort scarcely lessened by the thought that it was not a final farewell, and that this sad interview would be repeated more than once before the last.
As the marquis was about to leave the prison, the warden said in a low tone, as he was opening the last door:
“I do not think I am acting contrary to my duty in confiding this letter to you, sir. The dying prisoner who was taken away last night gave it to me one day, begging me to forward it to the address after his [pg 608] departure. He has gone away, and I wish to fulfil the poor fellow's request.”