第35章

"Jean," cried he, "you are wrong in your suspicions.I tell you that my father never tasted that wine.I snatched the glass from him before his lips had touched it.I flung it out into the courtyard, and, if you search, you will find its scattered fragments there still.""I am not sitting in judgment upon you; what you tell me to believe Iam ready to accept."

"Ah!" cried Norbert passionately, "he does not believe me; he thinks that I am guilty.I swear to you by all that I hold most sacred in this world, that I am innocent of this deed."The attached servant shook his head with a melancholy air.

"Of course, of course," said he; "but it is for us two to save the honor of the house of Champdoce.Should it happen that any suspicions should be aroused, put all the guilt upon my shoulders.I will defend myself in a manner which will only fix the crime more firmly upon me.

I will not throw away the bottle, but will retain it in my room, so that it may be found there, and its contents will be a damnatory evidence against me.What matters it how a poor man like me is sent out of the world? but with you it is different.You--"Norbert wrung his hands in abject despair; the sublime devotion of the old servant showed how firmly Jean believed in his criminality.He was about to assert his innocence further, when the loud sound of a closing door was heard above stairs.

"Hush!" said the old man; "some one approaches; we must not be seen whispering together like two plotters, for their suspicions would be certainly awakened; and I fear that my face or your eyes will reveal the secret.Quick, go upstairs, and endeavor, as soon as possible, to resume your calmness.I beg you not to compromise the honor of your name, which is in deadly peril."Without another word Norbert obeyed.His father was alone, and only the man to whom Jean had delegated the task of watcher remained by his bedside.At the sight of his young master he rose.

"The prescription which the doctor ordered to be made up has arrived,"said he."I have administered a dose to the Duke, and it seems to me that the result has been favorable."Norbert drew up a heavy arm-chair to the foot of the bed, and took his seat upon it.From this position he could see his father's face.His brain was dazed, and it was with the utmost difficulty that he could recall the chain of events which had drawn him towards the abyss into which he had so nearly been precipitated.

The veil had been taken from his eyes, and he now saw with perfect clearness and seemed again to hear his father's voice as it roughly warned him that the woman he loved was a mere plotter, who cared not for him, but was scheming for his fortune and his name.Then he had been furiously indignant and looked upon the words as almost blasphemous, but now he saw that his father was right.How was it that he had not before seen that Diana was flinging herself in his way, and that all her affected openness and simplicity were merely the perfections of art, and that step by step she had led him to the brink of the terrible precipice which yawned before him? The whole hideous part as played by Daumon was no longer a sealed book to him.She whom he had looked on as a pure and innocent girl was merely the accomplice of a scheming villain like the Counsellor, and after exciting his hatred and anger almost to madness, had placed the poison which was to take his father's life in his hands.A cold shiver ran through him as he realized this, and all his ardent love for Diana de Laurebourg was changed into a feeling of loathing and disgust.

At last the first pale rays of dawn broke through the casement, but before that Norbert, worn out with conflicting emotions, had fallen into a restless and uneasy sleep, and when he awoke the doctor was standing by the bedside of the sick man.At the first sound made by Norbert as he stirred in the chair, the doctor came towards him, saying, "We shall preserve his life."This prognostication was complete, for that very evening the Duke de Champdoce was able to move in his bed, the next day he uttered some incoherent words, and later on asked for food; but the will of iron had passed away, the features had lost their expression of determination, and the eye the glitter of pride and power.Never again would the Duke be able to exert that keen, stern intellect which had enabled him to influence all those around him; and in this terrible state of imbecility the haughty nobleman would ever remain, fed and looked after like a child, with no thought beyond his desires and his warm fire, and without a care for anything that was going on in the world around him.

After the enormity of his crime had been brought before him, the greatness of the punishment that he must endure now came across Norbert's mind.It was only now that Jean had ventured to tell him of M.de Puymandour's visit; and such a change had taken place in Norbert that he looked upon this visit as a special arrangement made by Providence.

"My father's will shall be carried out in every respect," said he to himself, and without an hour's delay he wrote to M.de Puymandour, begging him to call, and hoping that the grief which had fallen upon him had in no way altered the plan which had already been arranged.