"He would not have her buried by the Mediterranean;--no--nor would
he let the corpse be taken home for burial. The desire for flight
was upon him, and he said he must carry his dead with him till be
himself should die. That night he left Monte Carlo for Rome,
bearing with him those dear remains of wife and child; and the
good doctor seeing his desperation and full of pity for so vast a
woe, went with him. 'Perhaps,' he told me, `had I not gone, Georges
would not himself have reached Rome alive.' They traveled night
and day, for the young man would not rest an instant. His design
was to have the body of his wife burned in the crematorium of the
Eternal City, and Dr S. was, fortunately, able to obtain for him
the fulfilment of his desire. Then Saint-Cyr enclosed the ashes
of his beloved in a little silver box, slung it about his neck and
bade his friend farewell. I asked the doctor where he went.
`Northward,' he answered, `but I did not ask his plans. He gave
me no address; he had money in plenty, and it matters little where
he went, for death was in his face as he wrung my hand at parting,
and he cannot live to see the summer out."
That was the end of the letter. And for my part, with the sole
exception of Georges Saint-Cyr, I never heard of any man who became
rich over the tables of Monte Carlo.
V. Noemi; or, the Silver Ribbon
I.
I have often heard practising physicians and students of pathology
assert that no one ever died of "a broken heart,"--that is, of
course, in the popular sense of the phrase. Rupture of the heart,
such as that which killed the passionate tyrant John of Muscovy,
is a rare accident, and has no connection with the mental trouble
and strain implied in the common expression "heart-breaking." I
have, however, my own theory upon this question,--a theory founded on
some tolerably strong evidence which might serve more scientifically-
minded persons than myself as a text for a medical thesis; but, as
for me, I am no writer of theses, and had much ado to get honestly
through the only production of the sort which ever issued from my pen,
my These de Doctorat. For I studied the divine art of AEsculapius
at the Ecole de Medicine of Paris, and it was there, just before
taking my degree, that I became involved in a singular little history,
the circumstances of which first led me to adopt my present views
on the subject alluded to in the opening words of this story.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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