all human
ills, especially sickness, and now saw it arrive stealthily with its
pollutions, its weaknesses, and the loss of physical self-control,
the first concession made to death. Monpavon, entering the room behind
Jenkins, surprised the anxious expression of the great seigneur faced
by the terrible truth, and at the same time was horrified by the
ravages made in a few hours upon Mora's emaciated face, in which all the
wrinkles of age, suddenly evident, were mingled with lines of suffering,
and those muscular depressions which tell of serious internal lesions.
He took Jenkins aside, while the duke's toilet necessaries were carried
to him--a whole apparatus of crystal and silver contrasting with the
yellow pallor of the invalid.

"Look here, Jenkins, the duke is very ill."

"I am afraid so," said the Irishman, in a low voice.

"But what is the matter with him?"

"What he wanted, _parbleu_!" answered the other in a fury. "One cannot
be young at his age with impunity. This intrigue will cost him dear."

Some evil passion was getting the better of him but he subdued it
immediately, and, puffing out his cheeks as though his head were full of
water, he sighed deeply as he pressed the old nobleman's hands.

"Poor duke! poor duke! Ah, my friend, I am most unhappy!"

"Take care, Jenkins," said Monpavon coldly, disengaging his hands, "you
are assuming a terrible responsibility. What! is the duke as bad
as that?--ps--ps--ps--Will you see nobody? You have arranged no
consultation?"

The Irishman raised his hands as if to say, "What good can it do?"

The other insisted. It was absolutely necessary that Brisset,
Jousseline, Bouchereau, all the great physicians should be called in.

"But you will frighten him."

De Monpavon expanded his chest, the one pride of the old broken-down
charger.

"_Mon Cher_, if you had seen Mora and me in the trenches of
Constantine--ps--ps. Never looked away. We don't know fear. Give notice
to your colleagues. I undertake to inform him."

The consultation took place in the evening with great privacy, the duke
having insisted on this from a singular sense of shame produced by his
illness, by that suffering which discrowned him, making him the equal of
other men. Like those African kings who hide themselves in the recesses
of their palaces to die, he would have wished that men should believe
him carried off, transfigured, become a god. Then, too, he dreaded above
all things the expressions