“Thanks,” said the latter, trying to stand erect upon his legs; “you are an angel.  Rest easy, your love affairs will run no risk.  I will gloss it all over—­To your health, gentlemen!”

He emptied the glass and put it upon the table; he then smiled and waved his hand at his auditors with true royal courtesy; but his mouth remained half open as if his lips were petrified, his eyes grew large and assumed a haggard expression; the hand he had stretched out fell to his side; a second more, and he reeled and fell from his chair as if he had had a stroke of apoplexy.

Gerfaut, whose eyes had not left him, watched these different symptoms with unutterable anxiety; but in spite of his fright, he drew a sigh of relief when he saw Marillac mute and speechless.

“It is singular,” observed the notary, as he aided in removing his neighbor from the table, “that glass of water had more effect upon him than four or five bottles of wine.”

“Georges,” said Gerfaut to one of the servants, in an agitated voice, “open his bed and help me carry him to it; Monsieur de Bergenheim, I suppose there is a chemist near here, if I should need any medicine.”

The greater part of the guests arose at this unexpected incident, and some of them hastened to Marillac’s side, as he remained motionless in his chair.  The repeated bathing of his temples with cold water and the holding of salts to his nose were not able to bring him to consciousness.

Instead of going to his aid with the others, Bergenheim profited by the general confusion to lean over the table.  He plunged his finger into the artist’s glass, in which a part of the water remained, and then touched his tongue.  Only the notary noticed this movement.  Thinking this rather strange, he seized the glass in his turn and swallowed the few drops that it contained.

“Heavens!” he exclaimed, in a low voice, to Bergenheim, “I am not surprised that the bumper asphyxiated him on the spot.  Do you know, Baron, if this Monsieur de Gerfaut had taken anything but water during the evening, I should say that he was the drunker of the two; or that, if they were not such good friends, he wished to poison him in order to stop his talk.  Did you notice that he did not seem pleased to hear this story?”

“Ah! you, too!” exclaimed the Baron angrily, “everybody will know it.”

“To take a carafe of kirsch for clear water,” continued the notary, without paying any attention to the Baron’s agitation.  “The devil! the safe thing to do is to give him an emetic at once; this poor fellow has enough prussic acid in his stomach to poison a cow.”

“Who is talking of prussic acid and poisoning?” exclaimed the public prosecutor, running with an unsteady step from one extremity of the table to the other, “who has been poisoned?  I am the public prosecutor, I am the only one here who has any power to start an investigation.  Have they had an autopsy?  Where did they find it?  Buried in the fields or the woods, or floating on the river?”