Valentine — The Count of Monte Cristo

The night-light gutters over Valentine's curtains while Madame de Villefort slips from Edward's doorway at half past four to see whether the narcotic has worked. She finds the glass still a quarter full, empties it into the ashes, rinses and replaces the cup, then hesitates at the bed before drawing the curtain. Valentine seems not to breathe; her lips are white, her nails blue, and her heart cold under her stepmother's hand. Madame de Villefort believes she has consummated her last terrible work and retreats in remorse while the lamp dies and the room goes dark.

Morning brings the nurse, who praises the three-quarters empty glass Monte Cristo staged and dozes in an armchair until eight o'clock wakes her to stiff limbs and white lips. Her scream brings d'Avrigny on his usual visit and Villefort from his study. The doctor lifts Valentine, cries that this one too has fallen, and tells the procureur in a voice terrible in its calm that Valentine is dead. Villefort staggers; servants flee the accursed house with muttered imprecations.

Madame de Villefort enters in her dressing-gown, sees the glass mysteriously a third full again, and watches d'Avrigny taste the liquor and turn it blood-red with nitric acid. She flees and collapses in her room while the nurse is sent to her and no one yet questions the daughter. Morrel, finding Noirtier's door open and every servant gone, reads alarm in the old man's eyes and obeys the silent command quicker, quicker up the stairs.

He bursts into Valentine's open room, sees a black figure kneeling among white drapery, and hears Valentine is dead repeated like an echo before he can speak. The house believes the performance; only the reader knows the pastille still holds her under a sleep that looks like death.