“At midnight he died; the scene that morning had exhausted his remaining strength, and on the stroke of midnight I arrived with Daddy Gobseck. The house was in confusion, and under cover of it we walked up into the little salon adjoining the death-chamber. The three children were there in tears, with two priests, who had come to watch with the dead. Ernest came over to me, and said that his mother desired to be alone in the Count’s room.
“ ‘Do not go in,’ he said; and I admired the child for his tone and gesture; ‘she is praying there.’
“Gobseck began to laugh that soundless laugh of his, but I felt too much touched by the feeling in Ernest’s little face to join in the miser’s sardonic amusement. When Ernest saw that we moved towards the door, he planted himself in front of it, crying out, ‘Mamma, here are some gentlemen in black who want to see you!’
“Gobseck lifted Ernest out of the way as if the child had been a feather, and opened the door.
“What a scene it was that met our eyes! The room was in frightful disorder; clothes and papers and rags lay tossed about in a confusion horrible to see in the presence of Death; and there, in the midst, stood the Countess in disheveled despair, unable to utter a word, her eyes glittering. The Count had scarcely breathed his last before his wife came in and forced open the drawers and the desk; the carpet was strewn with litter, some of the furniture and boxes were broken, the signs of violence could be seen everywhere. But if her search had at first proved fruitless, there was that in her excitement and attitude which led me to believe that she had found the mysterious documents at last. I glanced at the bed, and professional instinct told me all that had happened. The mattress had been flung contemptuously down by the bedside, and across it, face downwards, lay the body of the Count, like one of the paper envelopes that strewed the carpet—he too was nothing now but an envelope. There was something grotesquely horrible in the attitude of the stiffening rigid limbs.
“The dying man must have hidden the counter-deed under his pillow to keep it safe so long as life should last; and his wife must have guessed his thought; indeed, it might be read plainly in his last dying gesture, in the convulsive clutch of his claw-like hands. The pillow had been flung to the floor at the foot of the bed; I could see the print of her heel upon it. At her feet lay a paper with the Count’s arms on the seals; I snatched it up, and saw that it was addressed to me. I looked steadily at the Countess with the pitiless clear-sightedness of an examining magistrate confronting a guilty creature. The contents were blazing in the grate; she had flung them on the fire at the sound of our approach, imagining, from a first hasty glance at the provisions which I had suggested for her children, that she was destroying a will which disinherited them. A tormented conscience and involuntary horror of the deed which she had done had taken away all power of reflection. She had been caught in the act, and possibly the scaffold was rising before her eyes, and she already felt the felon’s branding iron.
“There she stood gasping for breath, waiting for us to speak, staring at us with haggard eyes.
“I went across to the grate and pulled out an unburned fragment. ‘Ah, madame!’ I exclaimed, ‘you have ruined your children! Those papers were their titles to their property.’
“Her mouth twitched, she looked as if she were threatened by a paralytic seizure.
“ ‘Eh! eh!’ cried Gobseck; the harsh, shrill tone grated upon our ears like the sound of a brass candlestick scratching a marble surface.
“There was a pause, then the old man turned to me and said quietly:
“ ‘Do you intend Mme. la Comtesse to suppose that I am not the rightful owner of the property sold to me by her late husband? This house belongs to me now.’
“A sudden blow on the head from a bludgeon would have given me less pain and astonishment. The Countess saw the look of hesitation in my face.
“ ‘Monsieur,’ she cried, ‘Monsieur!’ She could find no other words.
“ ‘You are a trustee, are you not?’ I asked.
“ ‘That is possible.’
“ ‘Then do you mean to take advantage of this crime of hers?’
“ ‘Precisely.’
“I went at that, leaving the Countess sitting by her husband’s bedside, shedding hot tears. Gobseck followed me. Outside in the street I separated from him, but he came after me, flung me one of those searching glances with which he probed men’s minds, and said in the husky flute-tones, pitched in a shriller key:
“ ‘Do you take it upon yourself to judge me?’ ”
“From that time forward we saw little of each other. Gobseck let the Count’s mansion on lease; he spent the summers on the country estates. He was a lord of the manor in earnest, putting up farm buildings, repairing mills and roadways, and planting timber. I came across him one day in a walk in the Jardin des Tuileries.
“ ‘The Countess is behaving like a heroine,’ said I; ‘she gives herself up entirely to the children’s education; she is giving them a perfect bringing up. The oldest boy is a charming young fellow—’
“ ‘That is possible.’
“ ‘But ought you not to help Ernest?’ I suggested.
“ ‘Help him!’ cried Gobseck. ‘Not I. Adversity is the greatest of all teachers; adversity teaches us to know the value of money and the worth of men and women. Let him set sail on the seas of Paris; when he is a qualified pilot, we will give him a ship to steer.’
“I left him without seeking to explain the meaning of his words.
“M. de Restaud’s mother has prejudiced
