"Why this sudden kindness to an ame damnée!" I asked indifferently. "Has my last hour come?"
"God knows, monsieur; but you are, I think, to have a visitor, and I have orders! Kindly drink!"
He poured out a full cup of the frothy nectar, and held it to my lips. I quaffed it slowly, and felt the life blood surge anew along my veins. Also I felt my lacerated hand begin to pain, and soon I groaned aloud. Beudant on instant was a kind physician, and I blessed him as he poured some warm and grateful balsam on the wounds, and bound my injured fingers in a swathe of silk.
"Beudant." said I, "whichever takes me, Beelzebub or Satan, when I go, I'll sing your praises to him as a man of heart."
"Peace, blasphemer!" grated Jussieu.
"Peace yourself, you canting hound!" I cried.
For answer he smote me on the mouth. But that was too much even for me, who till that moment honestly believed that I was destitute of pride. I discovered at the touch of a blackfellow's paw that, at all events, I had a pride of race. I filled my lungs with air and shouted like a Stentor: "Help! Help! Murder! Murder!"
Jussieu shook like a leaf. "You blasted pig!" he muttered—very low. "God strike you dead!"
Truly his religion, for all his preaching, was not deep.
But Sir Charles Venner's voice answered at once, in very angry tones: "Beudant, Jussieu, what the devil are you doing?"