At this amazing revelation the duke was seized with a fit of trembling.  He sent instantly for the doctor, and asked imperiously what was the cause of his mother’s malady.  The doctor turned pale and stammered; but when Charles grew threatening he admitted that he had certain grounds for suspecting that the duchess was enceinte, but as he might easily have been deceived the first time, he would make a second investigation before pronouncing his opinion in so serious a matter.  The next day, as the doctor came out of the bedroom, the duke met him, and interrogating him with an agonised gesture, could only judge by the silence that his fears were too well confirmed.  But the doctor, with excess of caution, declared that he would make a third trial.  Condemned criminals can suffer no worse than Charles in the long hours that passed before that fatal moment when he learned that his mother was indeed guilty.  On the third day the doctor stated on his soul and conscience that Agnes of Durazzo was pregnant.

“Very good,” said Charles, dismissing the doctor with no sign of emotion.

That evening the duchess took a medicine ordered by the doctor; and when, half an hour later, she was assailed with violent pains, the duke was warned that perhaps other physicians ought to be consulted, as the prescription of the ordinary doctor, instead of bringing about an improvement in her state, had only made her worse.

Charles slowly went up to the duchess’s room, and sending away all the people who were standing round her bed, on the pretext that they were clumsy and made his mother worse, he shut the door, and they were alone.  Then poor Agnes, forgetting her internal agony when she saw her son, pressed his hand tenderly and smiled through her tears.

Charles, pale beneath his bronzed complexion, his forehead moist with a cold sweat, and his eyes horribly dilated, bent over the sick woman and asked her gloomily—­

“Are you a little better, mother?”

“Ah, I am in pain, in frightful pain, my poor Charles.  I feel as though I have molten lead in my veins.  O my son, call your brothers, so that I may give you all my blessing for the last time, for I cannot hold out long against this pain.  I am burning.  Mercy!  Call a doctor:  I know I have been poisoned.”

Charles did not stir from the bedside.

“Water!” cried the dying woman in a broken voice,—­“water!  A doctor, a confessor!  My children—­I want my children!”

And as the duke paid no heed, but stood moodily silent, the poor mother, prostrated by pain, fancied that grief had robbed her son of all power of speech or movement, and so, by a desperate effort, sat up, and seizing him by the arm, cried with all the strength she could muster—­

“Charles, my son, what is it?  My poor boy, courage; it is nothing, I hope.  But quick, call for help, call a doctor.  Ah, you have no idea of what I suffer.”