with him,
caring for his comfort in every way, thoughtful and affectionate,
allowing no other person to do anything for him, she had to present a
smiling face, in which the most suspicious eye could detect nothing but
filial tenderness, though the vilest projects were in her heart. With
this mask she one evening offered him some soup that was poisoned. He
took it; with her eyes she saw him put it to his lips, watched him drink
it down, and with a brazen countenance she gave no outward sign of that
terrible anxiety that must have been pressing on her heart. When he
had drunk it all, and she had taken with steady hands the cup and its
saucer, she went back to her own room, waited and listened....

The effect was rapid. The marquise heard her father moan; then she heard
groans. At last, unable to endure his sufferings, he called out to his
daughter. The marquise went to him. But now her face showed signs of
the liveliest anxiety, and it was for M. d'Aubray to try to reassure her
about himself! He thought it was only a trifling indisposition, and was
not willing that a doctor should be disturbed. But then he was seized by
a frightful vomiting, followed by such unendurable pain that he yielded
to his daughter's entreaty that she should send for help. A doctor
arrived at about eight o'clock in the morning, but by that time all that
could have helped a scientific inquiry had been disposed of: the doctor
saw nothing, in M. d'Aubray's story but what might be accounted for by
indigestion; so he dosed him, and went back to Compiegne.

All that day the marquise never left the sick man. At night she had a
bed made up in his room, declaring that no one else must sit up with
him; thus she, was able to watch the progress of the malady and see
with her own eyes the conflict between death and life in the body of her
father. The next day the doctor came again: M. d'Aubray was worse; the
nausea had ceased, but the pains in the stomach were now more acute;
a strange fire seemed to burn his vitals; and a treatment was ordered
which necessitated his return to Paris. He was soon so weak that
he thought it might be best to go only so far as Compiegne, but the
marquise was so insistent as to the necessity for further and better
advice than anything he could get away from home, that M. d'Aubray
decided to go. He made the journey in his own carriage, leaning upon his
daughter's shoulder; the behaviour of the marquise was always the same:
at last