the chief
precaution. Neither you nor your wife must dream of kissing the dying
man. And, indeed, you ought to go with your wife, Monsieur Hulot, to
hinder her from disobeying my injunctions."

Adeline and Hortense, when they were left alone, went to sit with
Lisbeth. Hortense had such a virulent hatred of Valerie that she could
not contain the expression of it.

"Cousin Lisbeth," she exclaimed, "my mother and I are avenged! that
venomous snake is herself bitten--she is rotting in her bed!"

"Hortense, at this moment you are not a Christian. You ought to pray to
God to vouchsafe repentance to this wretched woman."

"What are you talking about?" said Betty, rising from her couch. "Are
you speaking of Valerie?"

"Yes," replied Adeline; "she is past hope--dying of some horrible
disease of which the mere description makes one shudder----"

Lisbeth's teeth chattered, a cold sweat broke out all over her; the
violence of the shock showed how passionate her attachment to Valerie
had been.

"I must go there," said she.

"But the doctor forbids your going out."

"I do not care--I must go!--Poor Crevel! what a state he must be in; for
he loves that woman."

"He is dying too," replied Countess Steinbock. "Ah! all our enemies are
in the devil's clutches--"

"In God's hands, my child--"

Lisbeth dressed in the famous yellow Indian shawl and her black velvet
bonnet, and put on her boots; in spite of her relations' remonstrances,
she set out as if driven by some irresistible power.

She arrived in the Rue Barbet a few minutes after Monsieur and Madame
Hulot, and found seven physicians there, brought by Bianchon to study
this unique case; he had just joined them. The physicians, assembled in
the drawing-room, were discussing the disease; now one and now another
went into Valerie's room or Crevel's to take a note, and returned with
an opinion based on this rapid study.

These princes of science were divided in their opinions. One, who
stood alone in his views, considered it a case of poisoning, of private
revenge, and denied its identity with the disease known in the Middle
Ages. Three others regarded it as a specific deterioration of the blood
and the humors. The rest, agreeing with Bianchon, maintained that the
blood was poisoned by some hitherto unknown morbid infection. Bianchon
produced Professor Duval's analysis of the blood. The remedies to be
applied, though absolutely empirical and without hope, depended on the