“Oh, run, run, and snatch the boy from the hands of that man who causes me so much fright!”
CHAPTER XV.
THE MAN WITH THE MODEL.
WITH no need to be spurred in his quest, Gilbert darted through the rooms and as it would have taken too long to climb the walls, he made for the front door, which he opened himself and bounded out on the street.
Knowing Paris intimately, he reached the spot indicated by Andrea in her vision without delay and his first question to a storekeeper, who had witnessed the accident to the boy, confirmed the statement.
He proceeded straightway to the door in the alley, and knocked.
“Who knocks?” challenged a woman’s voice.
“I, the father of the wounded child whom you succored,” replied the knocker.
“Open, Albertine,” said a man’s voice: “it is Dr. Gilbert.”
He was let into a cellar, or rather cavern, down some moldering steps, lighted by a lamp set on the table cumbered with printed papers, books and manuscripts as Andrea had described.
In the shadow, and on a mattress, young Gilbert lay, but held out his arms to his father, calling him. However powerful the philosophical command in Gilbert, paternal love overruled decorum, and he sprang to the boy whom he pressed to his breast, with care not to hurt his bruised chest or his cut arm. After a long, fond kiss, he turned to thank the good Samaritan. He was standing with his feet far apart, one hand on the table, the other on his hip, lit by the lamp of which he had removed the shade the better to illumine the scene.