LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1762, 13 October 1879, Page 3

LITERATURE.

AN INVISIBLE WOUND. (BY MATJRTJS JOKAI.) {Concluded.) 1 One day I know not what demon whispered in my ear—“ Suppose all this were only dissimulation ?” Men are mad enough to seek how they can torment themselves in the midst of the greatest happiness.’ « iyjy w ifo had a work-table, the drawer of which she kept carefully looked. I had noticed this several times. She never forgot the key, and never left the drawer ° P ‘The question ran in my head—“ What can she be hiding from me there ?” I had taken leave of my senses. I no longer believed either in the innocence of her face or in the purity of her eyes, in her caresses or in her kisses. Suppose all that were nothing but hypocrisy V • One morning the Countess came to fetch her, and, after much entreaty, succeeded in deciding her to spend the day with her. Our estates were some miles _ apart, and I promised my wife to go and join her. ‘ As soon as the carriage had left the courtyard, I gathered together all the keys of the house, and tried them in the lock of the little drawer. One of them opened It, I felt like a man committing hia first onme. was a thief about to surprise the secrets of a feeble woman. My hands trembled as I

drew from oat the drawer, one by one, the objects contained therein, so that no confusion should betray that a strange hand had ransacked them. My breast heaved ; I was well-nigh suffocated. . . . Bshold, suddenly, beneath a mass of lace, I had placed my hand on a packet of letters I I felt as if a flash of lightning had passed from my head to my heart. Alas! one glance told me what these letters were! They were love letters !

‘ The packet was tied by a pink ribbon with a silver edge. ‘A* I touched the ribbon the thought occurred to me —Is this right ? Is this work worthy of an honest man ? To steal the secrets of a woman ! Secrets which belong to the time when she was a young girl ! Can I ask her to render an account of the thoughts she had before she belonged to me ? Can I be jealous of a time when she did not know me ? Who could suspect her of a fault ? Who ? I was base enough to do so. and the devil again whispered in my ear —Supposing these letters were of a time when I had already a right to all her thoughts, a right to be jealous even of her dreams, when she was already mine ! I untied the ribbon. No one saw me. There was not even a mirror in the room, to make roe blush for myself. I opened one letter, then another, and read them to the end. • Oh! what a fearfnl hour that was for me ! What did those letters contain 1 The vilest betrayal of which a man was ever yet a victim ; and they were written by one of my most intimate friends I And in what a strain ! what passion! what certainty of his love being shared ! How he spoke cf secrecy ! What counsel he lavished on the art of deceiving a husband I And all these letters were of a time when I was married and perfectly happy ! Shall I tell you what I felt ? Imagine the intoxication caused by a deadly poison. I drank freely of that poison. I read all the letters ; all. Then I re-folded them, re-tied the ribbon, re-placed the packet, and shut the drawer. • I knew that If I did not go for her at twelve o’clock she would come back from the Countess’s iu the evening. And so it happened. She got down hastily from the carriage and ran towards me as I stood waiting for her on the steps. She kissed me with extreme tenderness, and seemed to be very glad to be with me again. I let nothing be seen on my face. We talked, we supped together, and then retired to our separate bed-rooms. I did not close my eyes. While awake I counted every hour. When the clock struck a quarter past midnight, I got np and passed into her bed room. There was the beautiful blonde her head buried in the white pillows. It la thus that angels are depicted in the midst of white clouds. What a frightful lie was this on the part of Nature; vice with a face of such innocence ! My resolution was taken. I had the stubborness of the mad man haunted by a fixed idea. The poison had corroded my whole sonl.

• I placed my right hand gently under her throat, and hastily strangled her. She opened for one moment her large, dark blue eyes,."and looked at me with astonishment, then'closed them and died. She died without struggling against me, as f failling asleep. She was never angry with me. not even when I killed her. One drop of blood fell from her mouth on the back of my hand. You know where; I did not perceive it until next day, when it had dried. We buried her without any one suspecting the truth. I lived there in complete solitude ; who was there to control my actions ? She had neither relatives nor protectors to question me on the subject, and I designedly put off writing to my friends, so that none of them could arrive in time.

• On coming back from the vault I did not feel the slightest weight on my conscience. I had been cruel, but she deserved it. I did hate her; I could forget her ; I hardly thought about it. Never did a man commit a murder with less remorse than I.

‘ On my return, I found in the chateau the Countess so often mentioned. My measures had been so well taken that she also arrived too lata for the funeral. She seemed much agitated on seeing me. Terror, sympathy, grief—l know not what —made her speak so confusedly that I could not understand what she said to console me.

• Did I even listen to her ? What need had I of consolation ? I was not sorrowstricken. Finally she took me familiarly by the hand, and said in a low voice that she was obliged to confide to me a secret, and that she counted on my honor as a nobleman not to abuse it. She had given to my wife, to keep for her, a package of letters that she could not keep herself, and she begged of him to give them back to her. Whilst she was speaking, I felt several times that I shivered from head to foot. With apparent coldness I questioned her on the contents of these letters. At this question the lady started, and replied with indignation—

‘ Sir, your wife was more generous than you. When she took charge of these letters she did not ask me their contents. She even gave me her word never to look at them, and 1 am convinced that she never glanced at them. Here was a noble soul, and she would have disdained to break in secret her given word.’ •It is wall,’ I replied.’ ‘ How shall I recognise the package V ‘ It was tied by a pink ribbon with a silver edge.’ ‘ I will go and search for it. I took my wife’s keys and began to search for the packet. Although I knew where it was, I pretended to have some difficulty in finding it. ‘ls it this?’ I said, handing it to the Countess. . < Yes, yes! See, the knot I made is stiff there- She never touched it.’ ‘ I did not dare to lift my eyes to her. I feared lest she should read in them that I had undone it, and that I had undone something else besides. I took leave of her hastily ; she got into her carriage and drove off. Poor woman, she had her excuse. Her husband was brutal and dissipated. If I had been like him I should have deserved a wife like her. Oh! but my wife 1 Her heart was innocent--her soul angelic I She loved her husband, even in the moment when her husband killed her. Ido not know what I did during the first hours that followed. When I came back to the consciousness of the terrible reality, I was in the vault beside the coffin. I had not lost my senses sufficiently to think of calling her back to life, but I had sufficiently to think of speaking to her. I thought she would hear me. “By the love you bore me in life, and still bear me after death, I beseech you to avenge me, even in this world. Do nob put off my expiation to the world beyond the grave. Make me suffer here. Torment me—kill me; do not wait until my death your revunge.” These were the mad words I poured forth to the silent dead. Suddenly I fell asleep, or rather I fell into a swoon. What I know is that I began to dream. I saw the lid of the coffin slowly raised, and the dead woman within rose noiselessly before me, I was stretched stiff and stark beside the coffin, one hand on its edge and the other beneath her head. The lips of the corpse were white. One drop of blood hung from them. She bent slowly towards me, opened her eyes as when I murdered her, and kissed my right hand. The drop of blood fell again on my flesh ; her eyes shut once more, she fell back on her cold pillow, and the coffin closed over her dead body. ‘A short time aftsr I was awaked by a pain as sharp as that produced by a scorpion’s sting. It was early morning. No on© 8&w me. The drop of blood had diflappeared. There was no outward sign of the pain, and yet the spot where the blood had fallen burned as though being eaten away by a corroding poison. The pain gave me no respite and increased from hour to hour. I could sleep sometimes, but even then I never lost consciousness of my suffering. There was no one to whom I could make complaint, and for that matter, there was no one who would have believed my story. You have been witness to the intensity of my suffering and you know how much your two operations relieved me. But as soon as the wound heals the pain comes back. It has come now for the third time and I have no longer the strength to struggle against it. In an hour I shall be dead. One thought consoles mo—as she has avenged herself on me in this world, she will perhaps forgive me the next. 1 thank you for your good offices. May God reward you for them!’ A few days after the newspapers of Bz —— recorded that one of our richest lauded proprietors had blown out brains. Some attributed the suicide to grief at his wife’s death; others, who wore better informed, to an incurable wound. Those who knew best said he was a monomaniac, and bia wound, which could not be cured, existed only in hia imagination,