Strained with excitement, I started at the order, and slopped some of the wine from the cup on my hand. I felt a strange burning where it fell; but again the King cried, "Drink, sir."
I hesitated no more. Recalling my wandering wits and determining to play my part in the comedy, whatever it might mean, I bowed, cried "God save your Majesty," and raised the cup to my lips. As it touched them, I saw Madame hide her eyes with her hand and M. de Perrencourt lean farther across the table, while a short quick gasp of breath came from where Darrell stood by my side.
I knew how to take off a bumper of wine. No sippings and swallowings for me! I laid my tongue well down in the bottom of my mouth that the liquor might have fair passage to my gullet, and threw my head back as you see a hen do (in thanks to heaven, they say, though she drinks only water). Then I tilted the cup, and my mouth was full of the wine. I was conscious of a taste in it, a strange acrid taste. Why, it was poor wine, turned sour; it should go back to-morrow; that fool Jonah was a fool in all things; and I stood disgraced for offering this acrid stuff to a friend. And he gave it to the King! It was the cruellest chance. Why——
Suddenly, when I had gulped down but one good mouthful, I saw M. de Perrencourt lean right across the table. Yet I saw him dimly, for my eyes seemed to grow glazed and the room to spin round me, the figures at the table taking strange shapes and weird dim faces, and a singing sounding in my ears, as though the sea roared there and not on Dover beach. There was a woman's cry, and a man's arm shot out at me. I felt a sharp blow on my wrist, the cup was dashed from my hand on to the stone floor, breaking into ten thousand pieces, while the wine made a puddle at my feet. I stood there for an instant, struck motionless, glaring into the face that was opposite to mine. It was M. de Perrencourt's, no longer calm, but pale and twitching. This was the last thing I saw clearly. The King and his companions were fused in a shifting mass of trunks and faces, the walls raced round, the singing of the sea roared and fretted in my ears. I caught my hand to my brow and staggered; I could not stand, I heard a clatter as though of a sword falling to the floor, arms were stretched out to receive me and I sank into them, hearing a murmur close by me, "Simon, Simon!"
Yet one thing more I heard, before my senses left me—a loud, proud, imperious voice, the voice that speaks to be obeyed, whose assertion brooks no contradiction. It rang in my ears where nothing else could reach them, and even then I knew whence it came. The voice was the voice of M. de Perrencourt, and it seemed that he spoke to the King of England.
"Brother," he cried, "by my faith in God, this gentleman is innocent, and his life is on our heads, if he lose it."
I heard no more. Stupor veiled me round in an impenetrable mist. The figures vanished, the tumultuous singing ceased. A great silence encompassed me, and all was gone.