"For two months the Comte de Restaud lay on his bed, alone, and resigned to his fate. Mortal disease was slowly sapping the strength of mind and body. Unaccountable and grotesque sick fancies preyed upon him; he would not suffer them to set his room in order, no one could nurse him, he would not even allow them to make his bed. All his surroundings bore the marks of this last degree of apathy, the furniture was out of place, the daintiest trifles were covered with dust and cobwebs. In health he had been a man of refined and expensive tastes, now he positively delighted in the comfortless look of the room. A host of objects required in illness--rows of medicine bottles, empty and full, most of them dirty, crumpled linen, and broken plates, littered the writing-table, chairs, and chimney-piece. An open warming-pan lay on the floor before the grate; a bath, still full of mineral water had not been taken away. The sense of coming dissolution pervaded all the details of an unsightly chaos. Signs of death appeared in things inanimate before the Destroyer came to the body on the bed. The Comte de Restaud could not bear the daylight, the Venetian shutters were closed, darkness deepened the gloom in the dismal chamber. The sick man himself had wasted greatly. All the life in him seemed to have taken refuge in the still brilliant eyes. The livid whiteness of his face was something horrible to see, enhanced as it was by the long dank locks of hair that straggled along his cheeks, for he would never suffer them to cut it. He looked like some religious fanatic in the desert. Mental suffering was extinguishing all human instincts in this man of scarce fifty years of age, whom all Paris had known as so brilliant and so successful.
"One morning at the beginning of December 1824, he looked up at Ernest, who sat at the foot of his bed gazing at his father with wistful eyes.
" 'Are you in pain?' the little Vicomte asked.
" 'No,' said the Count, with a ghastly smile, 'it all lies HERE ANDABOUT MY HEART!'
"He pointed to his forehead, and then laid his wasted fingers on his hollow chest. Ernest began to cry at the sight.
" 'How is it that M. Derville does not come to me?' the Count asked his servant (he thought that Maurice was really attached to him, but the man was entirely in the Countess' interest)--'What! Maurice!' and the dying man suddenly sat upright in his bed, and seemed to recover all his presence of mind, 'I have sent for my attorney seven or eight times during the last fortnight, and he does not come!' he cried. 'Do you imagine that I am to be trifled with? Go for him, at once, this very instant, and bring him back with you. If you do not carry out my orders, I shall get up and go myself.'
" 'Madame,' said the man as he came into the salon, 'you heard M. le Comte; what ought I to do?'
" 'Pretend to go to the attorney, and when you come back tell your master that his man of business is forty leagues away from Paris on an important lawsuit. Say that he is expected back at the end of the week.--Sick people never know how ill they are,' thought the Countess;'he will wait till the man comes home.'
"The doctor had said on the previous evening that the Count could scarcely live through the day. When the servant came back two hours later to give that hopeless answer, the dying man seemed to be greatly agitated.
" 'Oh God!' he cried again and again, 'I put my trust in none but Thee.'
"For a long while he lay and gazed at his son, and spoke in a feeble voice at last.
" 'Ernest, my boy, you are very young; but you have a good heart; you can understand, no doubt, that a promise given to a dying man is sacred; a promise to a father . . . Do you feel that you can be trusted with a secret, and keep it so well and so closely that even your mother herself shall not know that you have a secret to keep?
There is no one else in this house whom I can trust to-day. You will not betray my trust, will you?'
" 'No, father.'
" 'Very well, then, Ernest, in a minute or two I will give you a sealed packet that belongs to M. Derville; you must take such care of it that no one can know that you have it; then you must slip out of the house and put the letter into the post-box at the corner.'
" 'Yes, father.'
" 'Can I depend upon you?'
" 'Yes, father.'
" 'Come and kiss me. You have made death less bitter to me, dear boy.
In six or seven years' time you will understand the importance of this secret, and you will be well rewarded then for your quickness and obedience, you will know then how much I love you. Leave me alone for a minute, and let no one--no matter whom--come in meanwhile.'
"Ernest went out and saw his mother standing in the next room.
" 'Ernest,' said she, 'come here.'
"She sat down, drew her son to her knees, and clasped him in her arms, and held him tightly to her heart.
" 'Ernest, your father said something to you just now.'
" 'Yes, mamma.'
" 'What did he say?'
" 'I cannot repeat it, mamma.'
" 'Oh, my dear child!' cried the Countess, kissing him in rapture.
'You have kept your secret; how glad that makes me! Never tell a lie;never fail to keep your word--those are two principles which should never be forgotten.'
" 'Oh! mamma, how beautiful you are! YOU have never told a lie, I am quite sure.'
" 'Once or twice, Ernest dear, I have lied. Yes, and I have not kept my word under circumstances which speak louder than all precepts.
Listen, my Ernest, you are big enough and intelligent enough to see that your father drives me away, and will not allow me to nurse him, and this is not natural, for you know how much I love him.'
" 'Yes, mamma.'
