bloodshot; the veins of the throat swelled; his cheeks and temples
became purple, as though he was struck with epilepsy; nothing was
wanting to complete this but the utterance of a cry. And the cry issued
from his pores, if we may thus speak--a cry frightful in its silence.
D'Avrigny rushed towards the old man and made him inhale a powerful
restorative.
"Sir," cried Morrel, seizing the moist hand of the paralytic, "they ask
me who I am, and what right I have to be here. Oh, you know it, tell
them, tell them!" And the young man's voice was choked by sobs. As for
the old man, his chest heaved with his panting respiration. One could
have thought that he was undergoing the agonies preceding death. At
length, happier than the young man, who sobbed without weeping, tears
glistened in the eyes of Noirtier. "Tell them," said Morrel in a hoarse
voice, "tell them that I am her betrothed. Tell them she was my beloved,
my noble girl, my only blessing in the world. Tell them--oh, tell them,
that corpse belongs to me!"
Page annotations:
Add a page annotation: