about my heart_!'

"He pointed to his forehead, and then laid his wasted fingers on his
hollow chest. Ernest began to cry at the sight.

"'How is it that M. Derville does not come to me?' the Count asked
his servant (he thought that Maurice was really attached to him, but
the man was entirely in the Countess' interest)--'What! Maurice!' and
the dying man suddenly sat upright in his bed, and seemed to recover
all his presence of mind, 'I have sent for my attorney seven or eight
times during the last fortnight, and he does not come!' he cried. 'Do
you imagine that I am to be trifled with? Go for him, at once, this
very instant, and bring him back with you. If you do not carry out my
orders, I shall get up and go myself.'

"'Madame,' said the man as he came into the salon, 'you heard M. le
Comte; what ought I to do?'

"'Pretend to go to the attorney, and when you come back tell your
master that his man of business is forty leagues away from Paris on an
important lawsuit. Say that he is expected back at the end of the
week.--Sick people never know how ill they are,' thought the Countess;
'he will wait till the man comes home.'

"The doctor had said on the previous evening that the Count could
scarcely live through the day. When the servant came back two hours
later to give that hopeless answer, the dying man seemed to be greatly
agitated.

"'Oh God!' he cried again and again, 'I put my trust in none but