“Get your hat, get your hat, Louis,” exclaimed Jeanette, rubbing her little hands, “and come away directly, or it will be too late. He will tell all, he will tell all; but he has been in a dying state since this morning. His speech seems failing, so make haste, make haste—he will tell all as soon as he sees you, he says, if you will but forgive him.” I darted to the sideboard and took my hat. Westover started up at the same moment, exclaiming in French, “May I go with you?” “Yes, yes,” cried Jeanette. “Come with him, come with him; the more the better; every one is a witness, and that is something.” We darted down the stairs and away. How we got through the streets, I do not know, but we all hurried separately through the crowds, running against half a dozen people, and getting hearty benedictions for our pains. I arrived first at the apothecary’s shop, and saw at a glance as I entered, the villain himself deliberately packing up something at the counter. He looked at me with a cold, sneering expression, but said nothing, and without asking any questions I ran up the stairs at once, to the miserable room of the Marquis de Carcassonne. I opened the door unceremoniously, and went in. The sight was one full of awful solemnity—at least to me, who had never seen any one die, except by a sudden and violent death, or by a gentle, yet quick transition from the life of this world to the life of another. On the wretched pallet bed, without a rag of curtain round it, lay the ghastly figure of the dying man. All living color had passed from his face; the swollen, bloated appearance, too, was gone. The features were sharpened and pinched; the eyes sunk; the temples collapsed; the white hair, wild and ragged. One ashy hand was stretched over the bed-clothes, holding a crucifix which lay upon his breast, and his eyes, which seemed glassy and almost immovable, were directed to the symbol of salvation. On the table stood a large wax-taper, and between the table and the bed stood the old priest, Father Noailles, who had come in at the end of my last interview with the Marquis. His head was slightly bent, as if watching the face of the dying man, while a younger man, with a white robe on, stood at the other side of the bed, holding a small, chased silver vessel in his hands. There was a dead silence in the room when I entered; but at the sound of my steps the priest turned round, and exclaimed, as soon as he saw me, “He is here, he is here! Henri de Carcassonne, he has come to you at length!” The eyes of the dying man turned faint and feebly toward me, and the priest advanced a step, and grasped my hand with a tight and eager pressure. “Forgive him,” he said; “tell him you forgive him!—if you be a man, if you be a Christian—tell him you forgive him!”