Villefort had long since had a tomb prepared for the reception of his family. The remains of poor Renée were already deposited there, whom, after ten years of separation, her father and mother were now going to rejoin.
The Parisians, always curious, always affected by funereal display, looked on with religious silence, while the splendid procession accompanied to their last abode two of the number of the old aristocracy, celebrated for traditional esprit, for fidelity to engagements and sincere devotion to principle.
In one of the mourning-coaches Beauchamp, Debray, and Château-Renaud were talking of the very sudden death of the marchioness.
"I saw Madame de Saint-Méran only last year at Marseilles," said Château-Renaud, "and should have supposed she might have lived to be a hundred years old, from her apparent sound health and great activity of mind and body. How old was she?"
"Franz assured me," replied Albert, "that she was seventy years old. But she has not died of old age, but of grief; it appears, since the death of the marquis, which affected her very deeply, she has not completely recovered her reason."
"But of what disease did she, then, die?" asked Debray.
"It is said to have been a congestion of the brain, or apoplexy, which is the same thing, is it not?"
"Nearly."
"It is difficult to believe it was apoplexy," said Beauchamp. "Madame de Saint-Méran, whom I once saw, was short, of slender form, and of a much more nervous than sanguine temperament; grief could hardly produce apoplexy in such a constitution as that of Madame de Saint-Méran."
"At any rate," said Albert, "whatever disease or doctor may have killed her, M. de Villefort, or rather, Mademoiselle Valentine,—or, still rather, our friend Franz, inherits a magnificent fortune, amounting, I believe, to eighty thousand livres per annum."
"And this fortune will be doubled at the death of the old Jacobin, Noirtier."
"That is a tenacious old grandfather," said Beauchamp. "Tenacem propositi virum. I think he must have made a bet with Death to outlive all his heirs, and he appears likely to succeed. He is the old Conventionalist of '93, who said to Napoleon, in 1814, 'You bend because your empire is a young stem, weakened by rapid growth. Take the Republic for a tutor; let us return with renewed strength to the battlefield, and I promise you five hundred thousand soldiers, another Marengo, and a second Austerlitz. Ideas do not become extinct, sire; they slumber sometimes, but only revive the stronger before they sleep entirely.'"
