Madame de Saint-Méran — The Count of Monte Cristo

While the Morcerf ball was still going on, Villefort sat alone in his locked study. Instead of working, he pulled out his secret list of enemies and tried to convince himself that Monte Cristo could not know about Auteuil. He told himself the Count had no reason to dig into an old buried secret. Still, fear would not leave him.

Then Madame de Saint-Méran burst in with terrible news. Her husband was dead. She told how they had left Marseilles together so he could see Valentine again. On the road he took his usual lozenges, fell into a deep sleep, and never woke. A doctor called it an apoplectic stroke. She had his body placed in a lead coffin and hurried to Paris ahead of it. Villefort went himself to fetch Valentine from the ball. He looked so pale that she ran to him at once. The girl nearly fainted when she learned her grandfather was gone, and the happy evening ended in grief.

That night Valentine sat with her grieving grandmother and then visited Noirtier, who wanted to see her at once. By morning Madame de Saint-Méran was feverish and strangely excited. She sent for Villefort and demanded that Valentine's marriage to Franz d'Épinay be rushed before she died. She spoke of seeing a white figure in the night, heard her glass move on the table, and said her husband's soul had called her. Valentine poured orangeade into that same glass and gave it to her grandmother, who drank it at one gulp and again called for a notary so all the family property would go to Valentine.

The notary came, and Valentine was sent out of the room while her grandmother made her will. A doctor was waiting downstairs, but her grandmother had forbidden her to send for him. Sick with fever and worry about Maximilian, Valentine walked in the garden to calm herself. She would not even pick a rose because mourning had already begun in her heart. The house behind her stayed dark and full of sorrow. Then she heard a voice call her name through the trees and knew it was Maximilian Morrel.