# The Mystery of Madeline Le Blanc/Chapter 4

IV.
Poor Madeline hadn't changed by the next morning. She lay as motionless as when first brought into the house. If there were any change, it was that she was beginning to look like one who had been dead for some time: heavy shadows lay under her eyes, her cheeks and temples began to sink, and there was but feeble respiration. Irène had stayed up all night, and with the mother had watched and prayed. The good father confessor had been sent for, in the hope that, if Madeline were not to get well, she would at least not depart without the ministration of extreme unction. One hour of the night after the other had drawn along; but she did not awake. At daybreak the mother, again overcome by bereavement and fatigue, was put to bed.
"Monsieur," said Irène to the father, who sat with his forehead resting on ​Madeline's couch, "I am going for the doctor. It is daybreak, and we must wait no longer."
"Very well," replied the father.
"Poor Madeline!" murmured the faithful Irène, as she kissed her silent companion 's face, upon which a tear dropped from her own—”Poor Madeline!" Irène was one of those abiding creatures who are only to be found, perhaps, in her own sex, to whom vicissitude is a power that strengthens devotion and love. She would have given her life for Madeline. There was no red in her cheeks now as she hastened through the deserted streets toward the doctor's office; the watching of the night had paled her face, but had not weakened her spirit.
​"Open, open," she cried in a determined voice, twisting the doorknob.
The door sprang ajar, and she was confronted by a dwarfish person of gaunt and nervous countenance.
"Where is the doctor?" she asked, shrinking from the ugly sight.
"I do not know," replied the small man, trembling from head to foot, and stepping back, as if in fear.
"When will he be here?"
"I do not know. Come back in an hour," he said, walking toward the open door, and looking at her, as much as to plead, “Go, go at once!"
Irène stood still for a moment, then taking a chair before the table on which the chemical formulæ had lain, she said, "I shall wait till he comes."
The anxiety of the dwarf grew intolerable to behold. He did not close the door, and walked nervously from one side of the room to the other, pausing now and then to listen or look out the window or door. His face was smooth, and so thin that the cheek-bones, chin and eye-sockets protruded like the knuckle on a skinny hand. When he spoke, and at ​times when silent, his chin fell, as if it were no natural part of his face, but something artificially fastened on; and his voice was weak and rasping. He looked like one who all his life had been imprisoned in the dark, and now being turned loose in the light, did not know what to do with his freedom and seemed pained by the brightness.
"Where can I find Doctor Satiani?" asked Irène,
"I do not know, I do not know."
"Are you one of his patients?" inquired the girl, beginning to sympathize with the object that her innocence prevented her from greatly fearing.
He cast a glance at her, his eyes growing red and moist, and for a moment he stopped pacing the floor and stood as if in reverie. He did not make any verbal reply, and what his expression said was too mysterious to be understood.
"I shall go to Doctor Satiani's pension, perhaps he is there," said Irène, arising.
"Yes, perhaps."
​"Yes, I will tell him to wait," mechanically echoed the dwarf.
Irène went to a public pension where she had once seen Doctor Satiani. Though he boarded there, he had not been seen that morning.
"It is yet early," observed the Madame of whom inquiry was made. "Come in and wait, likely he will be here soon."
Irène entered the house and waited until all the boarders had come and gone; but Doctor Satiani was not among them. Although it still looked early on account of a storm that was beginning to gather in the clouds, darkening the morning light, Irène felt that it was growing late, and that something had to be done at once.
"He has never yet missed a meal," said the Madame.
"I can wait no longer," and arising, she left instructions as to where the doctor should be sent if he came for his breakfast. She was undecided whether to return to the office or to the house where poor Madeline lay. “What good to go back without help," she said to herself, and turned in the direction of the ​office, hoping with every step that the doctor had come by this time, for it was no longer early.
The door of the office was open, but no one was within; the dwarfish person had disappeared. What was to be done? Nothing but wait. So she seated herself at the table and waited. After the lapse of about twenty minutes, Doctor Satiani entered. He was pale, had a fresh red scar on his left cheek, and looked fully ten years older.
"O doctor, come to Monsieur Le Blanc's at once! Madeline is no better. Will you come now? Be so good. All night she lay without moving a muscle."
The doctor, who had removed his hat, took it from the table, and placing several vials in his pocket, said, “Come, I will go with you this minute."
As they left the office it grew darker. For the time of year, the early morning had been close and sultry; and from the preparation the clouds, winds and thunder were making, it was evident there would soon be a storm. Irène walked a few steps ahead of the doctor, and turned now and then to see if he were catching up, that ​she might walk more rapidly, so anxious was she to bring aid. By the time they came in sight of the house, it had grown almost dark as night, and began to rain.
"At last," exclaimed the father to the doctor, as they enteredthe house. "We had given you up. She is no better."
Satiani was taciturn, avoided the father, and walked directly to the couch. At length, after some examination, he turned to Monsieur Le Blanc, the few neighbors who were there, and Madeline's father confessor, and said, "I must be alone with her."
"What did you say?" asked the father. He had not understood, for the clatter of the falling rain and the rolling thunder were deafening.
"I must be alone with her," he repeated. "When I call, I will tell you what can be done."
One after another they left the room.
"Oh! make Madeline well," pleaded Irène, taking hold of the doctor's arm.
"It is with you, my friend Satiani," said Monsieur Le Blanc.
The good father confessor, who was ​very old, knelt beside the couch and prayed while the last person passed out. Presently he arose, and departed.
It was as dark as night in the room. The wind hurled the rain against the house and rustled the foliage of the hoary trees in the garden; and at short intervals the thunder rolled and crashed. “She is mine; she will die, but she will come to me," muttered Satiani to himself, as his lips curled in an ugly smile. There was the expression of a felon in his face; and his small, dissimilar eyes emitted the glare of a beast. His shoulders bent, his neck protruded, and every step was taken with an elasticity that deadened sound and caused no motion in the room. He locked the doors, drew the curtains and lighted a candle at Madeline's head. As he leaned over her, rubbing her gums with the contents of a phial he had taken from his pocket, the speck of candle-light shone on a decrepit soul that had come to the surface of his face. He chuckled to himself as a miser when recounting his gold, showing yellow tushes instead of teeth, and a forehead arched with sinister wrinkles. His blue and black eyes blinked glassily
i ee ​in the light, and in respiration his mouth opened and closed. A monstrous uncanny shadow arose and fell on the wall as he writhed at his unholy task. After a moment, while still rubbing the gums of the death-like figure, there came a crash of thunder over the house that nearly threw him from his feet; and like a beaten dog he skulked into the dark of the room, while the candle shed its glimmer over bewildered tresses amid which lay the waxen face of Madeline. Satiani, trembling in the corner, fastened his ugly eyes upon the white figure. Every stroke of lightning that sent its flash upon the darkened windows and every rumble of thunder, struck him to the quick. He had no fear of man; but before God he was a coward. It was the struggle for a soul. The white visage beneath the candle he watched with the eyes of an eagle. It moved.
"I am not beaten—" he muttered, as another crash of thunder choked the sentence in his throat.
The lower lip began to quiver, and the knees to tremble. The arms—the head—the body began to straighten. There was ​life! She tried to speak. Then all relapsed into rest again,
"Madeline," said Satiani, leaning over her face, "Madeline."
"Joseph," she whispered, "Joseph."
"Joseph is not here."
"Where is he?"
"I do not know."
"Where am I?"
"In Paris."
The eyelids moved as if to open, and Satiani quickly laid pieces of coin upon them.
"Madeline, listen," and he grasped both her hands, which he held firmly on each side.
"What is this noise? I hear cannon."
"It is thunder. Listen, Madeline."
"I listen. I feel so weak."
"You must die."
"Let me live! Let me live!"
"On one consideration. Do you understand ?" A pause. "Madeline."
"I cannot see."
"No, you are blind."
"Who speaks to me?"
​"O let me live!"
"It is in my power."
"Let me live."
"On one condition, that you give me your body; or if you refuse, you shall be buried forever to-morrow, and molder in the ground as do the dead, worms shall gnaw your cheeks—here—and your mouth shall be a grinning doorway to the palace of living, creeping vermin.”
"O God!”
"There is no God, Do you agree?"
"O let me live!"
"It is done," and Satiani poured the contents of a phial between her lips, and at the same instant pressed a sponge over her face.
There was knocking on the doors at which the father, priest and others had gone out,
Stealthily Satiani unlocked them, and, falling on his knees by the couch, cried, "O God, take this soul unto Thyself!" loud enough to be heard by the impatient ears without the room. One sentence after another of this mockery of prayer came from his diabolical throat; and in less than ten seconds, amid the roaring of ​thunder, the flashing of lightning, the hissing rain, and the knocking at the door, there lay before him what seemed to be a corpse, white, still, silent, with purple lips. All the while, kneeling beside the couch, louder and louder did he pray. The doors broke open; the father, priest, and others entered.
"O Madeline!" cried the father,
"She is dying," said Satiani.
The women began to cry and the priest to pray. The father ran to the wife, who was lying in an up-stairs room; and Irène helped Satiani from his knees and led him to a seat, where he lay seemingly exhausted. Another candle was placed beside Madeline 's head, and before long there was no other sound in the darkened room save the prayer of her good father confessor and the echoes of thunder from the vanishing storm.