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Updated: May 25, 2025
The spectre glided slowly to the wall, and stood as if it were thinking what, with Dr. Renton's rule of action, was to become of the greatest good of the smallest number. Nathalie sat on her father's knee, thinking only of George Feval, and of his having been starved and grieved to death. "Father," said Nathalie, softly, "I felt, while you were reading the letter, as if he were near us.
He began life in a lawyer's office, became a volunteer in a cavalry regiment, and, later, secretary to Paul Feval, the novelist and dramatist. In the meantime, Gaboriau had contributed a number of sketches dealing with military and fashionable life to various minor Parisian journals, but it was not until 1866, with the publication of "L'Affaire Lerouge," that he suddenly sprang into fame.
George Sand irritated her; Balzac she esteemed, although he wearied her; to Eugène Sue and Scribe she ascribed a profound knowledge of the human heart; Dumas and Féval she adored. In reality she preferred Paul de Kock to all the others; but, as may be supposed, she did not even mention his name. To tell the truth, literature did not interest her overmuch.
Then came the sound of the closing of the hall door and the rattle of receding wheels, and somehow it was Nathalie and not his wife that he was holding so grimly in his thought, and with her, salient and vivid as before, the tormenting remembrance of his tenant, connected with the memory of George Feval. Springing to his feet, he walked the room.
The generals are asking me for commands, I am being asked to grant audiences, office-seekers are asking me for places. I reply: "I am nobody." I saw Captain Feval, husband of Fanny, the sister of Alice. * He was a prisoner of war, and was released on parole. * Wife of Charles Hugo. All the newspapers publish my "Appeal to the Germans." September 10. D'Alton-Shee and Louis Ulbach lunched with us.
He had not touched these books for a long time, and the period was already remote when he had thrown with his waste paper the puerile lucubrations of the gloomy Pontmartin and the pitiful Feval; and long since he had given to his servants, for a certain vulgar usage, the short stories of Aubineau and Lasserre, in which are recorded wretched hagiographies of miracles effected by Dupont of Tours and by the Virgin.
He took the sheets from the table, thinking, at the moment, only of George Feval; but the first line on which his eye rested was, "In the name of the Saviour, I charge you, be true and tender to mankind!" And the words touched him like a low voice from the grave. Their penetrant reproach pierced the hardness of his heart. He tossed the letter back on the table.
"Bran, the son of Feval, is the story of a man who went to the great plain, the land over the sea, the land of the children of Dana. He was sitting in his court when a beautiful woman appeared, and she told him to man his ship and sail to the land of the Gods, the land where no one dies, where blossoms fall for ever.... I have forgotten the song, what a wonderful song it is.
The fingers of the phantom still shone dimly on his head, and its white locks drooped above him, like a weft of light. "What was his name, father?" asked the pitying girl. "George Feval. The very name sounds like fever. He died on Christmas eve, fifteen years ago this night.
Then the phantom smiled, and, as its shining hands were withdrawn, the thought of his daughter mingled in the vision. She was bending over him! The dawn, the room, were the same. But the ghost of Feval had gone out from earth, away to its own land! "Father, dear father! Your eyes were open, and they did not look at me. There is a light on your face, and your features are changed!
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