“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.