The last words sounded faintly in my ears, and I thought that he, too, was hurt.
“And you, citizen—are you wounded?”
“No,” he replied, in a still fainter voice, as it appeared to me; but it was my senses forsaking me.
“Citizens,” I heard him say, “if I fall, you will find an address in my pocket, which is the home of this lad.”
That was all I heard. Suddenly, the earth appeared to slip from under me, and there was an end of my consciousness.
When next I knew myself, I awoke to life with the feeling of a beating red-hot hammer upon my left shoulder; I appeared to be struggling out of a state of fearful horror. When this cleared off and I knew myself to be once more alive, once more Citizen Réné Besson, I was in a little room, which I soon learnt was an apartment belonging to Citizen Duplay; and, at my side, reading a book, was Citizeness Cornelie Duplay, who had constituted herself my nurse.
And inasmuch as this history is not so much one of myself as of the Revolution, and of my part in it, I will only briefly recount the events of the next few weeks—of the next few months, in relation to myself.
It appeared that I had been wounded in the shoulder, not dangerously; but the loss of blood was very great, and I was weak as a little child. I could not raise my hand even to my head, while I had scarcely voice sufficient with which to thank my kind nurse for the offices she performed about me.
For weeks I lay upon that narrow bed, my constitution, and the temperate life I had hitherto led, fighting well in my favor. I could tell through chapters how gradually the memory of Sophie Gerbaut faded from my mind, and of how Cornelie Duplay took her place in my heart.
But I said nothing of my love; and when, weak, but quite safe, I sat once more at Citizen Duplay’s hospitable table, I still kept my passion to myself.