But D’Argenton had left the room, and Bélisaire stood in silent amazement, having caught a glimpse of the lighted salon and its crowd of people.
“It is nothing, only a mistake,” said the poet on his entrance; and while he majestically resumed his reading, the pedler hurried home through the dark streets, through the sharp hail and fierce wind, eager to reach Jack, who lay in a high fever, on the narrow iron bed in the attic-room.
He had been taken ill on his return from Etiolles; he lay there, almost without speaking, a victim to fever and a severe cold, so serious, that the physicians warned his friends that they had everything to fear. Bélisaire wished to summon M. Rivals, but to this Jack refused to consent. This was the only energy he had shown since his illness, and the only time he had spoken voluntarily, save when he told his friend to take his watch, and a ring he owned, and sell them.
All Jack’s savings had been absorbed in furnishing the rooms at Charonne, and the Bélisaire household was equally impoverished through their recent marriage. But it mattered very little; the pedler and his wife were capable of every sacrifice for their friend; they carried to the Mont de Piété the greater part of their furniture, piece by piece—for medicines were so dear. They were advised to send Jack to the hospital. “He would be better off; and, besides, he would then cost you nothing,” was the argument employed. The good people were now at the end of their resources, and decided to inform Charlotte of her son’s danger.
“Bring her back with you,” said Madame Bélisaire to her husband. “To see his mother would be such a comfort to the lad. He never speaks of her because he is so proud.”
But Bélisaire did not bring her. He returned in a very unhappy frame of mind, from the reception he had received. His wife, with her child asleep on her lap, talked in a low voice to a neighbor, in front of a poor little fire—such a one as is called a widow’s fire by the people. The two women listened to Jack’s painful breathing, and to the horrible cough that choked him. One would never have recognized this unfurnished, dismal room as the bright attic where cheerful voices had resounded such a short time before. There was no sign of books or studies. A pot of tisane was simmering on the hearth, filling the air with that peculiar odor which tells of a sickroom. Bélisaire came in.
“Alone?” said his wife.
He told in a low voice that he had not been permitted to see Jack’s mother.
“But had you no blood in your veins? You should have entered by force and called aloud, ‘Madame, your son is dying!’ Ah, my poor Bélisaire, you will never be anything but a weak chicken!”
“But, had I undertaken such a thing, I should simply have been arrested,” said the poor man, in a distressed tone.