The
marquise has killed me.' I was all in a tremble; I didn't understand
him. He seemed both a man and a corpse, if you can fancy, sir. 'But
you'll get well now, sir,' I said. And then he whispered again, ever
so weak; 'I wouldn't get well for a kingdom. I wouldn't be that woman's
husband again.' And then he said more; he said she had murdered him.
I asked him what she had done to him, but he only replied, 'Murder,
murder. And she'll kill my daughter,' he said; 'my poor unhappy child.'
And he begged me to prevent that, and then he said that he was dying,
that he was dead. I was afraid to move or to leave him; I was almost
dead myself. All of a sudden he asked me to get a pencil and write for
him; and then I had to tell him that I couldn't manage a pencil. He
asked me to hold him up in bed while he wrote himself, and I said he
could never, never do such a thing. But he seemed to have a kind of
terror that gave him strength. I found a pencil in the room and a piece
of paper and a book, and I put the paper on the book and the pencil into
his hand, and moved the candle near him. You will think all this very
strange, sir; and very strange it was. The strangest part of it was that
I believed he was dying, and that I was eager to help him to write. I
sat on the bed and put my arm round him, and held him up.
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