imagining a future limited to the enjoyments of home, in fear of awakening the enemy that had so long slept—the noise of a carriage sounded in the yard, then he heard the steps of an aged person ascending the stairs, followed by tears and lamentations, such as servants always give vent to when they wish to appear interested in their master’s grief.
He drew back the bolt of his door, and almost directly an old lady entered, unannounced, carrying her shawl on her arm, and her bonnet in her hand.
The white hair was thrown back from her yellow forehead, and her eyes, already sunken by the furrows of age, now almost disappeared beneath the eyelids swollen with grief.
“Oh, sir,” she said; “oh, sir, what a misfortune! I shall die of it; oh, yes, I shall certainly die of it!”
And then, falling upon the chair nearest the door, she burst into a paroxysm of sobs.
The servants, standing in the doorway, not daring to approach nearer, were looking at Noirtier’s old servant, who had heard the noise from his master’s room, and run there also, remaining behind the others.
Villefort rose, and ran towards his mother-in-law, for it was she.
“Why, what can have happened?” he exclaimed, “what has thus disturbed you? Is M. de Saint-Méran with you?”
“ M. de Saint-Méran is dead,” answered the old marchioness, without preface and without expression; she appeared to be stupefied. Villefort drew back, and clasping his hands together, exclaimed:
“Dead!—so suddenly?”