terrible conflict which was going on between the living energetic mind and the inanimate and helpless body.
Barrois, his features convulsed, his eyes suffused with blood, and his head thrown back, was lying at full length, beating the floor with his hands, while his legs had become so stiff, that they looked as if they would break rather than bend. A slight appearance of foam was visible around the mouth, and he breathed painfully, and with extreme difficulty.
Villefort seemed stupefied with astonishment, and remained gazing intently on the scene before him without uttering a word. He had not seen Morrel. After a moment of dumb contemplation, during which his face became pale and his hair seemed to stand on end, he sprang towards the door, crying out:
“Doctor, doctor! come instantly, pray come!”
“Madame, madame!” cried Valentine, calling her stepmother, and running upstairs to meet her; “come quick, quick!—and bring your bottle of smelling-salts with you.”
“What is the matter?” said Madame de Villefort in a harsh and constrained tone.
“Oh! come! come!”
“But where is the doctor?” exclaimed Villefort; “where is he?”
Madame de Villefort now deliberately descended the staircase. In one hand she held her handkerchief, with which she appeared to be wiping her face, and in the other a bottle of English smelling-salts. Her first look on entering the room was at Noirtier, whose face, independent of the emotion which such a scene could not fail of producing, proclaimed him to be in possession of his usual health; her second glance was at the dying man. She turned pale, and her eye passed quickly from the servant and rested on the master.