Then he uttered a short
laugh, and, shrugging his shoulders, he transferred his grip to the
blade, as if about to offer the hilt to the officer. Holding it so,
halfway betwixt point and quillons, he stepped suddenly back, and
before any there could put forth a hand to stay him, he had set the
pummel on the ground and the point at his breast, and so dropped
upon it and impaled himself.
A cry went up from every throat, and we sprang towards him. He
rolled over on his side, and with a grin of exquisite pain, yet in
words of unconquerable derision "You may have my sword now, Monsieur
l'Officier," he said, and sank back, swooning.
With an oath, the musketeer stepped forward. He obeyed Chatellerault
to the letter, by kneeling beside him and carefully withdrawing the
sword. Then he ordered a couple of his men to take up the body.
"Is he dead?" asked some one; and some one else replied, "Not yet,
but he soon will be."
Two of the musketeers bore him into the inn and laid him on the floor
of the very room in which, an hour or so ago, he had driven a bargain
with Roxalanne. A cloak rolled into a pillow was thrust under his
head, and there we left him in charge of his captors, the landlord,
Saint-Eustache, and La Fosse the latter inspired, I doubt not, by
that morbidity which is so often a feature of the poetic mind, and
which impelled him now to witness the death-agony of my Lord of
Chatellerault.
Myself, having resumed my garments, I disposed myself to repair at
once to the Hotel de l'Epee, there to seek Roxalanne, that I might
set her fears and sorrows at rest, and that I might at last make my
confession.
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