'Doctor, I will go to Bordeaux,' said Lucia, abruptly, who seemed to have expected his return.
'I have my doubts of it, but should like to be certain,' replied the physician, with a mournful smile.
'You will not give the certificate which is asked of you?' continued she, with an air at once of command and entreaty.
'I cannot give it conscientiously. You are in fact sufficiently strong to bear the fatigue of so short a journey; but it is not the journey that I dread; it is the sojourn there.'
Lucia briskly approached the doctor, and laid her hand upon his mouth. 'In the name of Heaven, not a word more!' said she; 'whatever you may have seen, heard, or suspected, (for during my fever I doubtless have spoken,) whatever you may now know, say nothing to me. Pity an unfortunate woman; serve me, but spare my feelings! May I rely upon you?'
'As on a father,' replied Monsieur Mallet, with tenderness; and he pressed to his lips the hand she had laid upon them.
The attempt made upon the person of Monsieur Gorsay produced through all the department of the Gironde a sensation exceeding any thing that had been known for many years previously. The age and wealth of the victim; the respect in which he was generally held in the country; the strange contrast between the two individuals apprehended on suspicion; the one a man of the world, connected with the best families of Guienne, and already somewhat noted for the follies of a dissipated youth; the other a convict just released from the galleys, as was stated on the first examination; and lastly, the illness of Madame Gorsay, which was generally attributed to conjugal attachment, the more meritorious, considering the age of its object; all these circumstances, over which there still hovered a mysterious uncertainty, had excited public curiosity to the highest pitch. Every one was impatient to solve the bloody enigma. The two accused individuals especially became the daily subjects of a multitude of conjectures, of explanations, of discussions, of wagers even, which were sustained with equal obstinacy by each party. Some refused to give credence to the guilt of Arthur. Of this party were in the first place all the women; who could believe the possibility that a man worthy of their regard might commit a poetical crime, but not that he could be guilty of a petty offence.
'Shocking!' exclaimed the fashionable fair ones of Bordeaux: 'Monsieur d'Aubian, with whom we used to dance last winter, he assassinate an old man! A young man of such polished manners! so agreeable, so witty, and with such a true Spanish air! He attempt to kill an old man to steal his purse! Preposterous!'
Had Arthur been accused of stabbing Monsieur Gorsay with some romantic intent, to run away with his wife for instance, the thing, however dreadful, might have had an air of probability. Sentimental spirits would not have refused pity for a crime thus ennobled by passion; but to stick a knife in a man for the purpose of afterward emptying his pockets—this was the act of a galley-slave, and not that of a gentleman. Thus reasoned female good sense; which, as is generally the case, reasoned with tolerable correctness.