“He cowered down, and covered himself with the
bed-clothes up to his chin, and found strength enough
to tear up the prescriptions, and to drive everyone,
whether friend or relation, who tried to make him listen
to reason, and who could not understand his attacks
of rage and neurosis from his bedside. He seemed
to be possessed by some demon, like those women in
hysterical convulsions, whom the bishops used formerly
to exorcise writh much pomp. It was painful to
see him.”
“That went on for a week, during which time
the pneumonia had ample opportunities for ravaging
and giving the finishing stroke to his body, which
had been so robust and free from ailments hitherto,
and he died, trying to utter some last words which
nobody understood, and endeavoring to point out one
particular article of furniture in the room.”
“His nearest relation was a cousin, the Marquis
de Territet, a skeptic, who lived in Burgundy, and
whom all this disturbance had upset in his habits,
and whose only desire was to get it all over, the legal
formalities, the funeral, and all the rest of it, as
soon as possible.
“Without reflecting on the strange suggestiveness
of that death-bed, and without looking to see whether
there might not be, somehow or other, a will in which
Lantosque expressed his last wishes, he wanted to spare
his corpse the contact of mercenary hands, and to lay
him out himself.
“You may judge of his surprise when, on throwing
back the bed-clothes, he first of all saw that Lantosque
was dressed from head to foot in tights, which accentuated,
rather than otherwise, his female form.
“Much alarmed, feeling that he must have been
violating some supreme order, and comprehending it
all, he went to his cousin’s writing-table,
opened it, and successively searched every drawer,
and soon found an envelope fastened with five seals,
and addressed to him. He broke them and read
as follows, written on a sheet of black-edged paper:
“’This is my only will. I leave all
that I possess to my cousin, Roland de Territet, on
condition that he will undertake my funeral; that in
his own presence, he will have me wrapped up in the
sheets of the bed on which I die, and have me put
into the coffin so, without any further preparations.
I wish to be cremated at Pere-Lachaise, and
not to be subjected to any examination, or post-mortem,
whatever may happen.’”
“And how came the marquis to betray the secret?”
Bob Shelley asked.
“The marquis is married to a charming Parisian
woman, and was any married man, who loved his wife,
ever known to keep a secret from her?”
You ask me, my dear friend, to send you my impressions
of Africa, my adventures, and especially an account
of my love affairs in this country which has attracted
me for so long. You laughed a great deal beforehand
at my dusky sweethearts, as you called them, and declared
that you could see me returning to France, followed
by a tall, ebony-colored woman, with a yellow silk
handkerchief round her head, and wearing voluminous
bright-colored trousers.
