And he entered the little room in which Edward slept; for though the child went to school during the day, his mother could not allow him to be separated from her at night. With a single glance Villefort’s eye ran through the room.
“Not here,” he said; “doubtless she is in her bedroom.” He rushed toward the door; it was bolted; he stopped, shuddering.
“Heloise!” he cried. He fancied he heard the sound of a piece of furniture being removed.
“Heloise!” he repeated.
“Who is there?” answered the voice of her he sought. He thought that voice more feeble than usual.
“Open the door!” cried Villefort; “open, it is I.”
But notwithstanding this request, notwithstanding the tone of anguish in which it was uttered, the door remained closed. Villefort burst it open with a violent kick. At the entrance of the room which led to her boudoir, Madame de Villefort was standing, erect, pale, her features contracted, and her eyes glaring horribly.
“Heloise! Heloise!” he said, “what is the matter? Speak!” The young woman extended her stiff white hand toward him.
“It is done, sir!” she said, with a rattling which seemed to tear her throat. “What more do you want?” and she fell full length on the floor.
Villefort ran to her and seized her hand, which convulsively clasped a crystal bottle with a golden stopper. Madame de Villefort was dead. Villefort, maddened with horror, stepped back to the threshold of the door, fixing his eyes on the corpse.
“My son!” he exclaimed suddenly, “where is my son?– Edward, Edward!” and he rushed out of the room, still crying, “Edward! Edward!” The name was pronounced in such a tone of anguish that the servants ran up.
“Where is my son?” asked Villefort; “let him be removed from the house, that he may not see –”
“Master Edward is not downstairs, sir,” replied the valet-de-chambre.
“Then he must be playing in the garden; go and see.”
“No, sir; Madame de Villefort sent for him half an hour ago; he went into her room, and has not been downstairs since.”
A cold perspiration burst out on Villefort’s brow; his legs trembled, and his brain filled with a confused maze of ideas.
“In Madame de Villefort’s room?” he murmured, and slowly returned, with one hand wiping his forehead, and with the other supporting himself against the wall. To enter the room, he must again see the body of his unhappy wife. To call Edward he must reawaken the echo of that room which now appeared like a sepulcher; to speak seemed like violating the silence of the tomb. His tongue clave to the roof of his mouth.
“Edward!” he stammered – “Edward!”
The child did not answer. Where, then, could he be, if he had entered his mother’s room and not since returned? He stepped forward. The corpse of Madame de Villefort was stretched across the doorway leading to the room in which Edward must be; those glaring eyes seemed to watch over the threshold, and the lips expressed a terrible and mysterious irony. Through the open door a portion of the boudoir was visible, containing an upright piano, and a blue satin couch. Villefort stepped forward two or three paces, and beheld his child lying – no doubt asleep on the sofa. The unhappy man uttered an exclamation of joy; a ray of light seemed to penetrate the abyss of despair and darkness. He had only to step over the corpse, enter the boudoir, take the child in his arms, and flee far, far away.
Villefort no longer presented a type of civilized man; he more resembled a tiger wounded to death, whose teeth were broken in his last agony. He no longer feared realities, but phantoms. He leaped over the corpse as though it had been a furnace. He took the child in his arms, pressed him, shook him, called him.
The child replied not.
He pressed his burning lips to the cheeks, but they were icy cold and pale; he felt his stiffened limbs; he pressed his hand upon the heart, but it no longer beat; the child was dead.
A folded paper fell from Edward’s breast. Villefort, thunderstruck, fell upon his knees; the child dropped from his arms, and rolled on the floor by the side of its mother. He picked up the paper, and, recognizing his wife’s writing, ran his eyes rapidly over its contents; they were as follows:
“You know that I was a good mother, since it was for my son’s sake I became criminal. A good mother cannot depart without her son.”
Villefort could not believe his eyes, – he could not believe his reason; he dragged himself toward the child’s corpse, and examined it as a lioness contemplates its dead cub. Then a piercing cry escaped from his breast, and he cried:
“Still the hand of God!”
The two victims alarmed him; he could not bear the solitude only shared by two corpses. Until then he had been sustained by rage, by that strengthener of strong hearts; by despair, that supreme agony which led the Titans to scale the heavens, and Ajax to defy the gods. He now rose, his head bent beneath the weight of grief, and shaking his damp, staring hair – he who had never felt compassion for any one determined to seek his father, that he might have someone to whom he could relate his misfortunes, – someone by whose side he might weep.
He descended the little stairs with which we are acquainted, and entered Noirtier’s room. The old man appeared to be listening attentively and as affectionately as his infirmities would allow to the Abbe Busoni, who looked cold and calm, as usual. Villefort, perceiving the abbe, passed his hand across his brow.
The past came to him like one of those waves whose wrath foams fiercer than the others.