'I believe you; before an hour the beaks will be on my haunches, as the other time; not such a fool!'
With these words, the galley-slave, by a movement as rapid as unforeseen, passed behind Monsieur Gorsay, grasped him tightly, closed his mouth with his left hand, while with the other he stabbed him in the side with anatomical precision. Stricken to the heart, the old man bit convulsively the fingers of the assassin, uttered a stifled groan, and expired. Bonnemain laid him upon the floor in silence, and assured himself that no pulse beat any longer. Certain then of never being denounced by his victim, he arose and plunged his hand into the casket which stood upon the secretary. At this instant, the noise of a door opening sent an icy chill through his veins. He turned in confusion, and by the light of the moon, which alone illuminated the scene of murder, he discerned at the entrance of the chamber a figure in white, which to a superstitious mind might have seemed the avenging spirit of the murdered man. This apparition moved directly up to the assassin, who in his fright dropped both the dagger and the rouleaus of gold. Crawling on his hands and knees, he succeeded in regaining the window, through which he sprung with a desperate effort. He traversed the garden, scaled the wall of the inclosure, and fled across the country, bearing on his hands, as on the former occasion, blood but no gold.
Two hours after this, the attendant of Madame Gorsay awoke, and perceived that the bed of her charge was empty. Alarmed, she ran to the window but found it closed; she then saw that the door was partly open. Lighting a taper, she followed from chamber to chamber the tracks of the somnambulist, who in her progress had not closed any of the doors behind her. She at length came to the threshold of the chamber of Monsieur Gorsay, where she suddenly stopped, uttering a shriek of horror, which aroused and terrified the whole household.
In the full moonlight which illuminated part of the room, Lucia, with dishevelled hair and closed eyes, was sitting by the dead body of her husband. The childish amusement in which she seemed to be seriously engaged told that the wanderings of madness were joined to those of somnambulism. She held the casket on her knees, turned out the rouleaus, one after the other, and scattered the pieces of gold upon the carpet, arranging them in symmetrical figures. The blood which flowed profusely from the old man's wound was mingled with this sport, and the fingers of the smiling idiot were dabbled in the purple gore.
Lucia, dragged from the fatal chamber, awoke only to fall into terrible convulsions, during which the last rays of reason seemed to be extinguished. The scene which had been enacted five months before on this spot was now repeated in a more fatal manner. The judicial inquest established in a positive manner that Madame Gorsay, in a fit of somnambulism, had assassinated her husband, against whom, since the death of Arthur d'Aubian, she had cherished an implacable hatred. It also appeared clearly demonstrated that she had only perpetrated during sleep a murder which had been long contemplated during her waking hours. Among the parties who held the inquest there were more than one who thought that even sleep was not a sufficient excuse for the deed, and that the matter ought to be brought before a jury; but the insanity of the accused having been legally proven, took away all pretext for a criminal procedure. Instead, therefore, of being incarcerated in a prison, the wretched widow was placed in a lunatic asylum; a step which to many seemed too lenient.
One day in the year 1838, among the persons whom curiosity had brought to the Institution at Charenton, might be seen a citizen of some fifty years of age, fat, well-conditioned, ruddy, and with clothes very well brushed. He gave his arm to a buxom female bedecked in full suit of holiday attire, and a finger to a child of about four years of age, whom maternal vanity had equipped in the martial uniform of an artillery officer. This group, a type of city felicity, the last reflex of patriarchal manners, was one which might have brought a smile of malice to the lip of an artist, or have furnished food for more serious reflection to a philosopher.
The head of this interesting family, who was about taking his son in his arms to give him a better view of the inmates of the establishment, suddenly stopped at sight of a female patient, still young and beautiful, who, without paying attention to any one, was walking up and down the small inclosure, repeating in a plaintive tone the name of 'Arthur.'
'What on earth ails you, Monsieur Bonnemain?' said the tawdry lady to her spouse. 'Why, you are as white as a sheet, and are all in a tremble!'
'It is from hunger then,' replied the old galley slave, as he recovered his sang froid, who, thanks to the dowry of his wife, had become the head of a flourishing commercial establishment; 'let us go to dinner. Achille is sleepy. These fools amuse me no longer. We have had enough of this stuff!'