Monsieur Bargemont went down two or three steps and saw Jean stretched motionless on the landing.
"A drunkard," he said; "there's so many of them! They were drunkards, those chaps who wanted to drown me."
He was holding his light to Jean's ashy face, while Gabrielle, leaning over the rail, looked on:
"It's not a drunken man," she said; "he is too white. Perhaps it is a poor young fellow dying of hunger. When you're brought down to rations of bread and horseflesh——"
Then she looked more carefully under frowning brows, and muttered:
"It's very queer, it's really very queer!"
"Do you know him?" asked Bargemont.
"I am trying to remember——"
But there was no need to try; already she had recalled it all—how her hand had been kissed at the gate of the little house at Bellevue.
Running to her rooms, she returned with water and a bottle of ether, knelt beside the fainting man, and slipping her arm, which was encircled by the white band of a nursing sister, under his shoulders, raised Jean's head. He opened his eyes, saw her, heaved the deepest sigh of love ever expelled from a human breast and felt his lids fall softly to again. He remembered nothing; only she was bending over him; and her breath had caressed his cheek. Now she was bathing his temples, and he felt a delicious sense of returning life. Monsieur Bargemont with the candle leant over Jean Servien, who, opening his eyes for the second time, saw the man's coarse red cheek within an inch of the actress's delicate ear. He gave a great cry and a convulsive spasm shook his body.