Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/249



HE doctor had scarce finished his meal before he hastened with an apology to attend upon his patient; and almost immediately after, I was myself summoned, and ushered up the great staircase and along interminable corridors to the bedside of my great-uncle the count. You are to think that up to the present moment I had not set eyes on this formidable personage, only on the evidences of his wealth and kindness. You are to think besides that I had heard him miscalled and abused from my earliest childhood up. The first of the émigrés could never expect a good word in the society in which my father moved. Even yet the reports I received were of a doubtful nature; even Romaine had drawn of him no very amiable portrait; and as I was ushered into the room, it was a critical eye that I cast on my great-uncle. He lay propped on pillows in a little cot no greater than a camp-bed, not visibly breathing. He was about eighty years of age, and looked it; not that his face was much lined, but all the blood and color seemed to have faded from his body, and even his eyes,