The doctor hesitated, then
answered: "You are courageous. I will not hide the truth from you.
There is no hope." The sick man's face contracted and his fingers
clutched the sheet. "How long have I to live?" he questioned after a
pause. "You will hardly last the night," replied Nacquart. There was a
fresh silence, broken only by the novelist's murmuring as if to
himself: "If only I had Bianchon, he would save me." Bianchon, one of
his fictitious personages, had become for the nonce a living reality.
It was Balzac who had taken the place of his medical hero in the
kingdom of shadows. Anxious to soften the effect of his sentence,
Nacquart inquired if his patient had a message or recommendation to
give. "No, I have none," was the answer. However, just before the
doctor's departure, he asked for a pencil, and tried to trace a few
lines, but was too week; and, letting the pencil drop from his
fingers, he fell into a slumber.
[*] 20th of August 1883.
In his _Choses Vues_, Victor Hugo informs us that, on the afternoon of
the 18th, his wife had been to the Hotel Beaujon and heard from the
servants that the master of the house was dying. After dinner he went
himself, and reached the Hotel about nine.
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