With a single glance Villefort's eye ran through the room.
"Not here," he said; "doubtless she is in her bedroom."
He rushed towards the door, found it bolted, and 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 blow.
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 hands towards him.
"It is done, monsieur," she said with a rattling noise 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 threshhold 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 down-stairs, sir," replied the valet.
"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 down-stairs since."
A cold perspiration burst out on Villefort's brow; his legs trembled, and his thoughts flew about madly in his brain like the wheels of a disordered watch.
"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 unfortunate wife.
To call Edward he must reawaken the echo of that room which now appeared like a sepulchre; to speak seemed like violating the silence of the tomb.
His tongue was paralyzed in 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 bore the stamp of a terrible and mysterious irony.
Through the open door was visible a portion of the boudoir, 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 was no longer the civilized man; he was a tiger hurt unto death, gnashing his teeth in his wound.
He no longer feared realities, but phantoms.
He leaped over the corpse as if it had been a burning brazier.
He took the child in his arms, embraced him, shook him, called him, but the child made no response.
He pressed his burning lips to the cheeks, but they were icy cold and pale; he felt the 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; it ran 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 towards the child's body, and examined it as a lioness contemplates its dead cub.
Then a piercing cry escaped from his breast, and he cried,