CHAPTER LXXX
THE ACCUSATION
'AVRIGNY soon restored the magistrate to consciousness, who had looked like a second corpse in that chamber of death.
"Oh, death is in my house!" cried Villefort.
"Say, rather, crime!" replied the doctor.
"M. d'Avrigny," cried Villefort, "I cannot tell you all I feel at this moment,—terror, grief, madness."
"Yes," said d'Avrigny with an imposing calmness, "but I think it is now time to act. I think it is time to stop this torrent of mortality. I can no longer bear to be in possession of these secrets without the hope of seeing the victims and society generally revenged."
Villefort cast a gloomy look around him. "In my house!" murmured he, "in my house!"
"Come, magistrate," said d'Avrigny, "show yourself a man; as an interpreter of the law, do honor to your profession by sacrificing your selfish interests to it."
"You make me shudder, doctor! Do you talk of a sacrifice?"
"I do"
"Do you then suspect any one?"
"I suspect no one; death raps at your door—it enters—it goes, not blind, but with clear intelligence, from room to room. Well! I follow its course, I track its passage; I adopt the wisdom of the ancients, and feel my way, for my friendship for your family and my respect for you are as a twofold bandage over my eyes; well"
"Oh! speak, speak, doctor; I shall have courage."
"Well, sir, you have in your establishment, or in your family, perhaps, one of those frightful phenomena of which each century produces only one. Locusta and Agrippina, living at the same time, are an exception,
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