heart-rending shrieks. Then she faltered
fragmentary sentences; she begged piteously for water or entreated God
to shorten her torture.

"Ah, it is horrible! I suffer too much! Death! My God! grant me death!"

She invoked all the friends she had ever known, calling for aid in a
despairing voice.

She called Mme. d'Escorval, the abbe, Maurice, her brother,
Chanlouineau, Martial!

Martial, this name was more than sufficient to extinguish all pity in
the heart of Mme. Blanche.

"Go on! call your lover, call!" she said to herself, bitterly. "He will
come too late."

And as Marie-Anne repeated the name in a tone of agonized entreaty:

"Suffer!" continued Mme. Blanche, "suffer, you who have inspired Martial
with the odious courage to forsake me, his wife, as a drunken lackey
would abandon the lowest of degraded creatures! Die, and my husband will
return to me repentant."

No, she had no pity. She felt a difficulty in breathing, but that
resulted simply from the instinctive horror which the sufferings of
others inspire--an entirely different physical impression, which is
adorned with the fine name of sensibility, but which is, in reality, the
grossest selfishness.

And yet, Marie-Anne was perceptibly sinking. Soon she had not strength
even to moan; her eyes closed, and after a spasm which brought a bloody
foam to her lips, her head sank back, and she lay motionless.

"It is over," murmured Blanche.

She rose, but her limbs trembled so that she could scarcely stand.

Her heart remained firm and implacable; but the flesh failed.

Never had she imagined a scene like that which she had just witnessed.
She knew that poison caused death; she had not suspected the agony of
that death.

She no longer thought of augmenting Marie-Anne's sufferings by
upbraiding her. Her only desire now was to leave this house, whose very
floor seemed to scorch her feet.

A strange, inexplicable sensation crept over her; it was not yet fright,
it was the stupor that follows the commission of a terrible crime--the
stupor of the murderer.

Still, she compelled herself to wait a few moments longer; then seeing
that Marie-Anne still remained motionless and with closed eyes, she
ventured to softly open the door and to enter the room in which her
victim was lying.

But she had not advanced three steps before Marie-Anne suddenly, and as
if she had been galvanized by an electric battery, rose and extended her
arms to bar her enemy's passa