he porter's table, where all the famous names of
fashionable Paris were being inscribed. It seemed as though a disastrous
gust of wind had gone through the house, carrying off a little of its
calm, and allowing disquiet and danger to filter into its comfort.

"What a misfortune!"

"Ah! it is terrible."

"And so suddenly!"

Such were the remarks that people were exchanging as they met.

An idea flashed into Jansoulet's mind:

"Is the duke ill?" he inquired of a servant.

"Ah, monsieur, he is dying! He will not live through the night!"

If the roof of the palace had fallen in upon his head he would not
have been more utterly stunned. Red lights flashed before his eyes, he
tottered, and let himself drop into a seat on a velvet-covered bench
beside the great cage of monkeys. The animals, over-excited by all this
bustle, suspended by their tails, by their little long-thumbed
hands, were hanging to the bars in groups, and came, inquisitive and
frightened, to make the most ludicrous grimaces at this big, stupefied
man as he sat staring at the marble floor, repeating aloud to himself,
"I am ruined! I am ruined!"

The duke was dying. He had been seized suddenly with illness on the
Sunday after his return from the Bois. He had felt intolerable burnings
in his bowels, which passed through his whole body, searing as with a
red-hot iron, and alternating with a cold lethargy and long periods of
coma. Jenkins, summoned at once, did not say much, but ordered certain
sedatives. The next day the pains came on again with greater intensity
and followed by the same icy torpor, also more accentuated, as if life,
torn up by the roots, were departing in violent spasms. Among those
around him, none was greatly concerned. "The day after a visit to
Saint-James Villa," was muttered in the antechamber, and Jenkins's
handsome face preserved its serenity. He had spoken to two or
three people, in the course of his morning rounds, of the duke's
indisposition, and that so lightly that nobody had paid much attention
to the matter.

Mora himself, notwithstanding his extreme weakness, although he felt his
head absolutely blank, and, as he said, "not an idea anywhere," was far
from suspecting the gravity of his condition. It was only on the third
day, on waking in the morning, that the sight of a tiny stream of blood,
which had trickled from his mouth over his beard and the stained pillow,
had frightened this fastidious man, who had a horror of