He spoke of his death without apparent emotion; but at the words, "You were faithless to me," his voice faltered and trembled. "I would not, could not believe it at first. I doubted the evidence of my senses, rather than doubt you. But I was forced to believe at last. I was no longer anything in my house but a laughing-stock. But I was in your way. You and your lover needed more room and liberty. You were tired of constraint and hypocrisy. Then it was that, believing that my death would make you free and rich, you brought in poison to rid yourselves of me." Bertha had at least the heroism of crime. All was discovered; well, she threw down the mask. She tried to defend her accomplice, who lay unconscious in a chair. "It is I that have done it all," cried she. "He is innocent." Sauvresy turned pale with rage. "Ah, really," said he, "my friend Hector is innocent! It wasn't he, then, who, to pay me up--not for his life, for he was too cowardly to kill himself; but for his honor, which he owes to me--took my wife from me? Wretch! I hold out my hand to him when he is drowning, I welcome him like a brother, and in return, he desolates my hearth!... And you knew what you were doing, my friend Hector--for I told you a hundred times that my wife was my all here below, my present and my future, my dream and happiness and hope and very life! You knew that for me to lose her was to die. But if you had loved her--no, it was not that you loved her; you hated me. Envy devoured you, and you could not tell me to my face, 'You are too happy.' Then, like a coward, you dishonored me in the dark. Bertha was only the instrument of your rancor; and she weighs upon you to-day--you despise and fear her. My friend, Hector, you have been in this house the vile lackey who thinks to avenge his baseness by spitting upon the meats which he puts on his master's table!" The count only responded by a shudder. The dying man's terrible words fell more cruelly on his conscience than blows upon his cheek. "See, Bertha," continued Sauvresy, "that's the man whom you have preferred to me, and for whom you have betrayed me. You never loved me--I see it now--your heart was never Mine. And I--I loved you so! From the day I first saw you, you were my only thought; as if your heart had beaten in place of Mine. Everything about you was dear and precious to me; I adored your whims, caprices, even your faults. There was nothing I would not do for a smile from you, so that you would say to me, Thank you, between two kisses. You don't know that for years after our marriage it was my delight to wake up first so as to gaze upon you as you lay asleep, to admire and touch your lovely hair, lying dishevelled across the pillow. Bertha!" He softened at the remembrance of these past joys, which would not come again. He forgot their presence, the infamous treachery, the poison; that he was about to die, murdered by this beloved wife; and his eyes filled with tears, his voice choked.