"Enter!" said Charles.
The perfumer appeared. Charles went towards him with imperious air and compressed lip.
"Your Majesty sent for me," said Réné, trembling.
"You are a skilful chemist, are you not?"
"Sire"—
"And you know all that the cleverest doctors know?"
"Your Majesty exaggerates."
"No; my mother has told me so. Besides, I have confidence in you, and I prefer to consult you rather than any one else. See," he continued, pointing to the dog, "look at what this animal has between his teeth, I beg you, and tell me of what he died."
While Réné, candle in hand, bent over the floor as much to hide his emotion as to obey the King, Charles stood up, his eyes fixed on the man, waiting with an impatience easy to understand for the reply which was to be his sentence of death or his assurance of safety.
Réné drew a kind of scalpel from his pocket, opened it, and with the point detached from the mouth of the greyhound the particles of paper which adhered to the gums; then he looked long and attentively at the humor and the blood which oozed from each wound.