“There is no mule,” cried he to whom this question was addressed.
The host clasped his hands and looked around him suspiciously, whilst Grimaud knit his brows and approached the wounded man, whose worn, hard features awoke in his mind such awful recollections of the past.
“There can be no longer any doubt but that it is himself,” said he.
“Does he still live?” inquired the innkeeper.
Making no reply, Grimaud opened the poor man’s jacket to feel if the heart beat, whilst the host approached in his turn; but in a moment they both fell back, the host uttering a cry of horror and Grimaud becoming pallid. The blade of a dagger was buried up to the hilt in the left side of the executioner.
“Run! run for help!” cried Grimaud, “and I will remain beside him here.”
The host quitted the room in agitation, and as for his wife, she had fled at the sound of her husband’s cries.
Chapter XXXII.
The Absolution.
This is what had taken place: We have seen that it was not of his own free will, but, on the contrary, very reluctantly, that the monk attended the wounded man who had been recommended to him in so strange a manner. Perhaps he would have sought to escape by flight had he seen any possibility of doing so. He was restrained by the threats of the two gentlemen and by the presence of their attendants, who doubtless had received their instructions. And besides, he considered it most expedient, without exhibiting too much ill-will, to follow to the end his role as confessor.
The monk entered the chamber and approached the bed of the wounded man. The executioner searched his face with the quick glance peculiar to those who are about to die and have no time to lose. He made a movement of surprise and said: