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Updated: June 19, 2025
Madame de Saint-Meran succumbed to a powerful dose of brucine or of strychnine, which by some mistake, perhaps, has been given to her." Villefort seized the doctor's hand. "Oh, it is impossible," said he, "I must be dreaming! It is frightful to hear such things from such a man as you! Tell me, I entreat you, my dear doctor, that you may be deceived." "Doubtless I may, but" "But?"
"Indeed," said Chateau-Renaud, "it seems quite miraculous to make a new house out of an old one; for it was very old, and dull too. I recollect coming for my mother to look at it when M. de Saint-Meran advertised it for sale two or three years ago." "M. de Saint-Meran?" said Madame de Villefort; "then this house belonged to M. de Saint-Meran before you bought it?"
However, as it became dark, and I could no longer see, I fell asleep; I was soon aroused by a piercing shriek, as from a person suffering in his dreams, and he suddenly threw his head back violently. I called the valet, I stopped the postilion, I spoke to M. de Saint-Meran, I applied my smelling-salts; but all was over, and I arrived at Aix by the side of a corpse."
"True," said Louis XVIII., "was there not a marriage engagement between you and Mademoiselle de Saint-Meran?" "Daughter of one of your majesty's most faithful servants." "Yes, yes; but let us talk of this plot, M. de Villefort." "Sire, I fear it is more than a plot; I fear it is a conspiracy."
It was not over the downfall of the man, but over the defeat of the Napoleonic idea, that they rejoiced, and in this they foresaw for themselves the bright and cheering prospect of a revivified political existence. An old man, decorated with the cross of Saint Louis, now rose and proposed the health of King Louis XVIII. It was the Marquis de Saint-Meran.
You were walking one evening in M. de Villefort's garden; from what you relate, I suppose it to have been the evening of Madame de Saint-Meran's death. You heard M. de Villefort talking to M. d'Avrigny about the death of M. de Saint-Meran, and that no less surprising, of the countess.
"I do not know; but, though unwilling to introduce money matters into our present conversation, I will just say this much that her extreme dislike to me has its origin there; and I much fear she envies me the fortune I enjoy in right of my mother, and which will be more than doubled at the death of M. and Mme. de Saint-Meran, whose sole heiress I am.
In one of the mourning-coaches Beauchamp, Debray, and Chateau-Renaud were talking of the very sudden death of the marchioness. "I saw Madame de Saint-Meran only last year at Marseilles, when I was coming back from Algiers," said Chateau-Renaud; "she looked like a woman destined to live to be a hundred years old, from her apparent sound health and great activity of mind and body. How old was she?"
"Because Madame de Saint-Meran is just arrived in Paris, bringing the news of M. de Saint-Meran's death, which took place on the first stage after he left Marseilles.
"Ah," said the Marquise de Saint-Meran, a woman with a stern, forbidding eye, though still noble and distinguished in appearance, despite her fifty years "ah, these revolutionists, who have driven us from those very possessions they afterwards purchased for a mere trifle during the Reign of Terror, would be compelled to own, were they here, that all true devotion was on our side, since we were content to follow the fortunes of a falling monarch, while they, on the contrary, made their fortune by worshipping the rising sun; yes, yes, they could not help admitting that the king, for whom we sacrificed rank, wealth, and station was truly our 'Louis the well-beloved, while their wretched usurper his been, and ever will be, to them their evil genius, their 'Napoleon the accursed. Am I not right, Villefort?"
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