oltaire grasped
my arm, and said in a voice full of tears:

"Captain Babache, we are watching the setting of a star--we are seeing
the Pleiade as she is gradually lost in the universal abysm. Soon,
Eternity, with its unbroken, derisive silence, will lie between
Adrienne and all whom she loves and who love her--" He suddenly broke
off, and went his way in the night.

Before I slept, I repeated every word of what had happened at our
interview, to my master, and Madame de Bouillon did not get him in her
coach again. After that he spent every hour that he could at
Mademoiselle Lecouvreur's house. He and Monsieur Voltaire no longer
avoided each other. There was the truce of God between them for the
few days that Adrienne Lecouvreur remained on earth.

Few persons believed that she would be able to play again, but the
mere hint of it crammed the Theatre Francais to the doors on that
last, unforgettable night. Gaston Cheverny and I had secured seats in
the pit of the theater. Gaston had been admitted to the honor of
Mademoiselle Lecouvreur's acquaintance and admired her at a distance,
like a star.

There was a breathless excitement in the crowd, something in the air
of the theater seemed to communicate excitement. It was like that
tremulous stillness which seems to overtake the world when the earth
is about to be riven asunder, and volcanoes are making ready to
explode in oceans of fire and flame and molten death.

Not one more person, I believe, could have been packed into the
theater five minutes before the curtain rose, except in one box that
remained empty--the box of the Duchesse de Bouillon. I looked around
for Count Saxe, and caught a glimpse of him afar off in the
crowd--then he disappeared. Again I saw him passing quite close to me.
By some accident, he wore a full suit of black that night--black
velvet coat, and black silk small-clothes--perhaps to render himself
less conspicuous; but he was a man to be noted in a crowd because of
his beauty, even if he had been the veriest oaf alive--or marked out
for a great man, if he had been as ugly as I am. That night he was
like a perturbed spirit seeking for rest and finding none; unable to
drag himself away from that last touching and splendid vision of
Adrienne Lecouvreur, and yet, almost unable to bear it.

Everybody in the theater knew to whom that empty box belonged--it was
to the worst enemy of Adrienne Lecouvreur. The story had gone forth
that Mademoiselle Leco