Cousin Betty Part 73

"Monsieur," said Victorin to Bianchon, "have you any hope of saving Monsieur and Madame Crevel?"

"I hope, but I do not believe that I may," said Bianchon. "The case is to me quite inexplicable. The disease is peculiar to negroes and the American tribes, whose skin is differently const.i.tuted to that of the white races. Now I can trace no connection with the copper-colored tribes, with negroes or half-castes, in Monsieur or Madame Crevel.

"And though it is a very interesting disease to us, it is a terrible thing for the sufferers. The poor woman, who is said to have been very pretty, is punished for her sins, for she is now squalidly hideous if she is still anything at all. She is losing her hair and teeth, her skin is like a leper's, she is a horror to herself; her hands are horrible, covered with greenish pustules, her nails are loose, and the flesh is eaten away by the poisoned humors."

"And the cause of such a disease?" asked the lawyer.

"Oh!" said the doctor, "the cause lies in a form of rapid blood-poisoning; it degenerates with terrific rapidity. I hope to act on the blood; I am having it a.n.a.lyzed; and I am now going home to ascertain the result of the labors of my friend Professor Duval, the famous chemist, with a view to trying one of those desperate measures by which we sometimes attempt to defeat death."

"The hand of G.o.d is there!" said Adeline, in a voice husky with emotion.

"Though that woman has brought sorrows on me which have led me in moments of madness to invoke the vengeance of Heaven, I hope--G.o.d knows I hope--you may succeed, doctor."

Victorin felt dizzy. He looked at his mother, his sister, and the physician by turns, quaking lest they should read his thoughts. He felt himself a murderer.

Hortense, for her part, thought G.o.d was just.

Celestine came back to beg her husband to accompany her.

"If you insist on going, madame, and you too, monsieur, keep at least a foot between you and the bed of the sufferer, that is 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sionate 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 G.o.d'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, a.s.sembled 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 ident.i.ty 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 a.n.a.lysis of the blood. The remedies to be applied, though absolutely empirical and without hope, depended on the verdict in this medical dilemma.

Lisbeth stood as if petrified three yards away from the bed where Valerie lay dying, as she saw a priest from Saint-Thomas d'Aquin standing by her friend's pillow, and a sister of charity in attendance.

Religion could find a soul to save in a ma.s.s of rottenness which, of the five senses of man, had now only that of sight. The sister of charity who alone had been found to nurse Valerie stood apart. Thus the Catholic religion, that divine inst.i.tution, always actuated by the spirit of self-sacrifice, under its twofold aspect of the Spirit and the Flesh, was tending this horrible and atrocious creature, soothing her death-bed by its infinite benevolence and inexhaustible stores of mercy.

The servants, in horror, refused to go into the room of either their master or mistress; they thought only of themselves, and judged their betters as righteously stricken. The smell was so foul that in spite of open windows and strong perfumes, no one could remain long in Valerie's room. Religion alone kept guard there.

How could a woman so clever as Valerie fail to ask herself to what end these two representatives of the Church remained with her? The dying woman had listened to the words of the priest. Repentance had risen on her darkened soul as the devouring malady had consumed her beauty. The fragile Valerie had been less able to resist the inroads of the disease than Crevel; she would be the first to succ.u.mb, and, indeed, had been the first attacked.

"If I had not been ill myself, I would have come to nurse you," said Lisbeth at last, after a glance at her friend's sunken eyes. "I have kept my room this fortnight or three weeks; but when I heard of your state from the doctor, I came at once."

"Poor Lisbeth, you at least love me still, I see!" said Valerie.

"Listen. I have only a day or two left to think, for I cannot say to live. You see, there is nothing left of me--I am a heap of mud! They will not let me see myself in a gla.s.s.--Well, it is no more than I deserve. Oh, if I might only win mercy, I would gladly undo all the mischief I have done."

"Oh!" said Lisbeth, "if you can talk like that, you are indeed a dead woman."

"Do not hinder this woman's repentance, leave her in her Christian mind," said the priest.

"There is nothing left!" said Lisbeth in consternation. "I cannot recognize her eyes or her mouth! Not a feature of her is there! And her wit has deserted her! Oh, it is awful!"

"You don't know," said Valerie, "what death is; what it is to be obliged to think of the morrow of your last day on earth, and of what is to be found in the grave.--Worms for the body--and for the soul, what?--Lisbeth, I know there is another life! And I am given over to terrors which prevent my feeling the pangs of my decomposing body.--I, who could laugh at a saint, and say to Crevel that the vengeance of G.o.d took every form of disaster.--Well, I was a true prophet.--Do not trifle with sacred things, Lisbeth; if you love me, repent as I do."

"I!" said Lisbeth. "I see vengeance wherever I turn in nature; insects even die to satisfy the craving for revenge when they are attacked. And do not these gentlemen tell us"--and she looked at the priest--"that G.o.d is revenged, and that His vengeance lasts through all eternity?"

The priest looked mildly at Lisbeth and said:

"You, madame, are an atheist!"

"But look what I have come to," said Valerie.

"And where did you get this gangrene?" asked the old maid, unmoved from her peasant incredulity.

"I had a letter from Henri which leaves me in no doubt as to my fate.

He has murdered me. And--just when I meant to live honestly--to die an object of disgust!

"Lisbeth, give up all notions of revenge. Be kind to that family to whom I have left by my will everything I can dispose of. Go, child, though you are the only creature who, at this hour, does not avoid me with horror--go, I beseech you, and leave me.--I have only time to make my peace with G.o.d!"

"She is wandering in her wits," said Lisbeth to herself, as she left the room.

The strongest affection known, that of a woman for a woman, had not such heroic constancy as the Church. Lisbeth, stifled by the miasma, went away. She found the physicians still in consultation. But Bianchon's opinion carried the day, and the only question now was how to try the remedies.

"At any rate, we shall have a splendid _post-mortem_," said one of his opponents, "and there will be two cases to enable us to make comparisons."

Lisbeth went in again with Bianchon, who went up to the sick woman without seeming aware of the malodorous atmosphere.

"Madame," said he, "we intend to try a powerful remedy which may save you--"

"And if you save my life," said she, "shall I be as good-looking as ever?"

"Possibly," said the judicious physician.

"I know your _possibly_," said Valerie. "I shall look like a woman who has fallen into the fire! No, leave me to the Church. I can please no one now but G.o.d. I will try to be reconciled to Him, and that will be my last flirtation; yes, I must try to come round G.o.d!"