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"No, sister; for you appear so happy, that the last scruples I had upon your account are quite gone." "Then let us make haste," said the hunchback, as she pointed to the chafing-dish. "Be satisfied, sister it will not be long," said Cephyse. And she took the chafing-dish full of charcoal, which she had placed in a corner of the garret, and brought it out into the middle of the room.
After long struggling against the fatal design of her sister, the poor, dejected, broken-hearted creature finished by determining to share Cephyse's fate, and seek in death the end of so many evils. "Of what are you thinking, sister?" said Cephyse, astonished at the long silence.
And yet," added Cephyse, in a voice of emotion, "my heart almost breaks sometimes, to think that you will die like me." "How selfish!" said the hunchback, with a faint smile. "What reasons have I to love life? What void shall I leave behind me?" "But you are a martyr, sister," resumed Cephyse. "The priests talk of saints! Is there one of them so good as you?
Still, the assurances which she had just given Jacques calmed his grief and anxiety a little; he had sense and feeling enough to perceive that the fatal track which he had hitherto so blindly followed was leading both him and Cephyse directly to infamy. One of the bailiffs, having knocked at the coach-door, said to Jacques: "My lad, you have only five minutes left so make haste."
Notwithstanding the general gayety, these words made a gloomy impression; a sort of electric shudder ran through the assemblage, and nearly every countenance became suddenly serious. "Oh, Cephyse!" said Jacques, in a tone of reproach. "Luck to the Cholera," repeated the Queen, fearlessly. "Let him spare those who wish to live, and kill together those who dread to part!"
"Better, lady. This fresh air and then the thought, that, since you are come my poor sister will no more be reduced to despair; for I will tell you all, and I am sure you will have pity on Cephyse will you not, lady?" "Rely upon me, my child," answered Adrienne, forced to dissemble her painful embarrassment; "you know I am interested in all that interests you.
"Let me kiss that beautiful hair for the last time," said Cephyse, as she pressed her lips to the silky locks which crowned the hunchback's pale and melancholy countenance, "and then we will remain very quiet." "Sister, your hand," said the sewing-girl; "for the last time, your hand and then, as you say, we will move no more. We shall not have to wait long, I think, for I begin to feel dizzy.
Ninny Moulin had just taken hold of Rose Pompon with his right hand, and of the Queen with his left, in order to advance between the two, in which figure he showed off his buffoonery to the utmost extent, when the door again opened, and the same waiter, who had called out Jacques, approached Cephyse with an air of consternation, and whispered in her ear, as he had before done to Sleepinbuff.
The noise approached, and a voice was heard exclaiming, not far from the doer: "Good heavens! what a smell of fire!" And, at the same instant, the door was violently shaken, and another voice exclaimed: "Open! open!" "They will come in they will save me and my sister is dead Oh, no! I will not have the baseness to survive her!" Such was the last thought of Cephyse.
It is not my fault, if we do not die together!" cried Cephyse in despair, as she knelt beside the couch, on which the other lay motionless. "Dead!" she murmured in terror. "Dead before me! Perhaps it is that I am the strongest. Ah! it begins fortunately like her, I see everything dark-blue I suffer what happiness! I can scarcely breathe.
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