“Is it quite certain that he’s dead?”

Everybody looked at Planus and began to laugh.

“Well, here’s a greenhorn,” said the officer.  “Don’t I tell you that he was all blue this morning, when we cut him down to take him to the chasseurs’ barracks!”

The barracks were not far away; and yet Sigismond Planus had the greatest difficulty in the world in dragging himself so far.  In vain did he say to himself that suicides are of frequent occurrence in Paris, especially in those regions; that not a day passes that a dead body is not found somewhere along that line of fortifications, as upon the shores of a tempestuous sea,—­he could not escape the terrible presentiment that had oppressed his heart since early morning.

“Ah! you have come to see the man that hanged himself,” said the quartermaster-sergeant at the door of the barracks.  “See! there he is.”

The body had been laid on a table supported by trestles in a sort of shed.  A cavalry cloak that had been thrown over it covered it from head to foot, and fell in the shroud-like folds which all draperies assume that come in contact with the rigidity of death.  A group of officers and several soldiers in duck trousers were looking on at a distance, whispering as if in a church; and an assistant-surgeon was writing a report of the death on a high window-ledge.  To him Sigismond spoke.

“I should like very much to see him,” he said softly.

“Go and look.”

He walked to the table, hesitated a minute, then, summoning courage, uncovered a swollen face, a tall, motionless body in its rain-soaked garments.

“She has killed you at last, my old comrade!” murmured Planus, and fell on his knees, sobbing bitterly.

The officers had come forward, gazing curiously at the body, which was left uncovered.

“Look, surgeon,” said one of them.  “His hand is closed, as if he were holding something in it.”

“That is true,” the surgeon replied, drawing nearer.  “That sometimes happens in the last convulsions.

“You remember at Solferino, Commandant Bordy held his little daughter’s miniature in his hand like that?  We had much difficulty in taking it from him.”

As he spoke he tried to open the poor, tightly-closed dead hand.

“Look!” said he, “it is a letter that he is holding so tight.”

He was about to read it; but one of the officers took it from his hands and passed it to Sigismond, who was still kneeling.

“Here, Monsieur.  Perhaps you will find in this some last wish to be carried out.”

Sigismond Planus rose.  As the light in the room was dim, he walked with faltering step to the window, and read, his eyes filled with tears: 

“Well, yes, I love you, I love you, more than ever and forever!  What is the use of struggling and fighting against fate?  Our sin is stronger than we . . . "

It was the letter which Frantz had written to his sister-in-law a year before, and which Sidonie had sent to her husband on the day following their terrible scene, to revenge herself on him and his brother at the same time.