“But if he should not recover,” said the doctor hesitating.
“He will.”
“Still I must give you a receipt; I could not think of taking an object of this value otherwise.”
“Just as you please; my name is Count Fenix.”
Five minutes afterwards Balsamo put the receipt in his pocket, and went out accompanied by Marat.
“Do not forget your head!” said Balsamo, to whom the absence of mind in this cool student was a compliment.
Marat parted from the chief of the Order with doubt in his heart but meditation in his eyes, and he said to himself: “Does the soul really exist?”
CHAPTER XX.
THE DIAMOND COLLAR.
ROUSSEAU had been cheated into going to take breakfast with the royal favorite: he was formally invited by the Dauphiness to come to Trianon to conduct in person one of his operas in which she and her ladies and titled amateurs generally were to take the parts even to the supernumeraries.
He had not attired himself specially and he had stuffed his head with a lot of disagreeable plain truths to speak to the King, if he had a chance.