第97章 PART II(43)

The doctor watched the case.At intervals,I too saw her again.

Although it happened long ago,I cannot prevail upon myself to dwell on the deliberate progress of the hellish Borgia poison,in undermining the forces of life.The nervous shudderings reached their climax,and then declined as gradually as they had arisen.For hours afterwards,she lay in a state of complete prostration.Not a last word,not a last look,rewarded the devoted girl,watching faithfully at the bedside.No more of it--no more!Late in the afternoon of the next day,Doctor Dormann,gently,most gently,removed Minna from the room.Mr.Keller and I looked at each other in silence.We knew that Madame Fontaine was dead.

VIII

I had not forgotten the clasped book that she had tried vainly to open,in Doctor Dormann's presence.Taking it myself from under the pillow,Ileft Mr.Keller and the doctor to say if I should give it,unopened,to Minna.

"Certainly not!"said the doctor.

"Why not?"

"Because it will tell her what she must never know.I believe that book to be a Diary.Open it,and see."I found the spring and opened the clasps.It _was_a Diary.

"You judged,I suppose,from the appearance of the book?"I said.

"Not at all.I judged from my own experience,at the time when I was Medical Officer at the prison here.An educated criminal is almost invariably an inveterate egotist.We are all interesting to ourselves--but the more vile we are,the more intensely we are absorbed in ourselves.The very people who have,logically speaking,the most indisputable interest in concealing their crimes,are also the very people who,almost without exception,yield to the temptation of looking at themselves in the pages of a Diary.""I don't doubt your experience,doctor.But your results puzzle me.""Think a little,Mr.David,and you will not find the riddle so very hard to read.The better we are,the more unselfishly we are interested in others.The worse we are,the more inveterately our interest is concentrated on ourselves.Look at your aunt as an example of what I say.

This morning there were some letters waiting for her,on the subject of those reforms in the treatment of mad people,which she is as resolute as ever to promote--in this country as well as in England.It was with the greatest difficulty that I prevailed on her not to answer those letters just yet:in other words,not to excite her brain and nervous system,after such an ordeal as she has just passed through.Do you think a wicked woman--with letters relating merely to the interests of other people waiting for her--would have stood in any need of my interference?

Not she!The wicked woman would have thought only of herself,and would have been far too much interested in her own recovery to run the risk of a relapse.Open that book of Madame Fontaine's at any of the later entries.You will find the miserable woman self-betrayed in every page.

It was true!Every record of Madame Fontaine's most secret moments,presented in this narrative,was first found in her Diary.

As an example:--Her Diary records,in the fullest detail,the infernal ingenuity of the stratagem by which she usurped her title to Mr.Keller's confidence,as the preserver of his life."I have only to give him the Alexander's Wine,"she writes,"to make sure,by means of the antidote,of curing the illness which I have myself produced.After that,Minna's mother becomes Mr.Keller's guardian angel,and Minna's marriage is a certainty."On a later page,she is similarly self described--in Mrs.Wagner's case--as acting from an exactly opposite motive,in choosing the Looking-Glass Drops."They not only kill soonest,and most surely defy detection,"she proceeds,"but I have it on the authority of the label,that my husband has tried to find the antidote to these Drops,and has tried in vain.If my heart fails me,when the deed is done,there can be no reprieve for the woman whose tongue I must silence for ever--or,after all I have sacrificed,my child's future is ruined."There is little doubt that she intended to destroy these compromising pages,on her return to Mr.Keller's house--and that she would have carried out her intention,but for those first symptoms of the poison,which showed themselves in the wandering of her mind,and the helpless trembling of her hands.