The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an AttorneyWarren, Samuel
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The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney
Warren, Samuel
Detective and mystery stories, English; Legal stories, English
"He is still alive," replied a young man in answer to Mr. White's hurried
inquiry. We rapidly ascended the stairs, and in the front apartment of
the first floor beheld one of the saddest, mournfulest spectacles which
the world can offer--a fine, athletic man, still in the bloom of natural
health and vigor, and whose pale features, but for the tracings there of
fierce, ungoverned passions, were strikingly handsome and intellectual,
stretched by his own act upon the bed of death! It was La Houssaye! Two
gentlemen were with him--one a surgeon, and the other evidently a
clergyman, and, as I subsequently found, a magistrate, who had been sent
for by the surgeon. A faint smile gleamed over the face of the dying man
as we entered, and he motioned feebly to a sheet of paper, which, closely
written upon, was lying upon a table placed near the sofa upon which the
unhappy suicide was reclining. Mr. White snatched, and eagerly perused
it. I could see by the vivid lighting up of his keen gray eye that it
was, in his opinion, satisfactory and sufficient.
"This," said Mr. White, "is your solemn deposition, knowing yourself to
be dying?"
"Yes, yes," murmured La Houssaye; "the truth--the truth!"
"The declaration of a man," said the clergyman with some asperity of
tone, "who defyingly, unrepentingly, rushes into the presence of his
Creator, can be of little value!"
"Ha!" said the dying man, rousing himself by a strong effort;
"I repent--yes--yes--I repent! I believe--do you hear?--and
repent--believe. Put that down," he added, in tones momently feebler
and more husky, as he pointed to the paper; "put that down, or--or
perhaps--Eu--génie--perhaps"--
As he spoke, the faint light that had momently kindled his glazing eye
was suddenly quenched; he remained for perhaps half a minute raised on
his elbow, and with his outstretched finger pointing towards the paper,
gazing blindly upon vacancy. Then the arm dropped, and he fell back dead!
We escaped as quickly as we could from this fearful death-room, and I
found that the deposition which Mr. White brought away with him gave a
full, detailed account, written in the French language, of the
circumstances which led to the death of Mrs. Rushton.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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