me little surprise he had
planned for her. It seemed as if she could not bear it."

M. Villefort's accident was the subject of discussion for many days. He
had purchased a wonderful pair of pistols as a gift for a young friend.
How it had happened that one had been loaded none knew; it was just
possible that he had been seized with the whim to load it himself--at
all events, it had gone off in his hands. An inch--nay, half an inch--to
the right, and Madame Villefort, who flew downstairs at the sound of the
report, would only have found a dead man at her feet.

"_Ma foi!_" said M. Renard, repressing his smile; "this is difficult for
Monsieur, but it may leave '_la petite Dame_' at liberty."

Madame de Castro flew at him with flashing eyes.

"Silence!" she said, "if you would not have me strike you with my cane."
And she looked as if she were capable of doing it.

Upon his sick-bed M, Villefort was continually haunted by an
apparition--an apparition of a white face and white draperies, such
as he had seen as he fell. Sometimes it was here, sometimes there,
sometimes near him, and sometimes indistinct and far away. Sometimes he
called out to it and tried to extend his arms; again he lay and watched,
it murmuring gentle words, and smiling mournfully.

Mrs. Trent and the doctor were in despair. Madame Villefort obstinately
refused to be forced from her husband's room. There were times when they
thought she might sink and die there herself. She would not even leave
it when they obliged her to sleep. Having been slight and frail from
ill health before, she became absolutely attenuated. Soon all her beauty
would be gone.

"Do you know," said Mrs. Trent to her husband, "I have found out that
she always carries that letter in her breast? I see her put her hand to
it in the strangest way a dozen times a day."

One night, awakening from a long sleep to a clearer mental consciousness
than usual, M. Villefort found his apparition standing over him.

She stood with one hand clinched upon her breast, and she spoke to him.

"Arthur!" she said,--"Arthur, do you know me?"

He answered her, "Yes."

She slipped down upon her knees, and held up in her hand a letter
crushed and broken.

"Try to keep your mind clear while you listen to me," she implored.
"Try--try! I must tell you, or I shall die. I am not the bad woman you
think me. I never had read it--I had not seen it. I think he must have
been mad. Once I loved him, but he