Then he tried to move, but fell back again with a groan of pain: "My leg is broken, I am afraid," he murmured feebly.
"I had best fetch a doctor," rejoined M. le Comte.
"If you can find one, father, dear," said Crystal. "M. de Marmont ought to be moved at once to his home."
"No! no!" protested Victor feebly, "not home! to the Trois Rois . . . the diligence. . . . I must go to England to-night . . . the Emperor's orders."
"The doctor will decide," said Crystal gently. "Father, dear, will you go?"
Jeanne came with water and brandy. De Marmont drank eagerly of the one, and then sipped the other.
"I must go," he said more firmly, "the diligence starts at nine o'clock."
Again he tried to move, and a great cry of agony rose to his throat—not of physical pain, though that was great too, but the wild, agonising shriek of mental torment, of disappointment and wrath and misery, greater than human heart could bear.
"The Emperor's orders!" he cried. "I must go!"
Crystal was silent. There was something great and majestic, something that compelled admiration and respect in this tragic impotence, this failure brought about by uncontrolled passion at the very hour when success—perhaps—might yet have changed the whole destinies of the world. De Marmont lying here, helpless to aid his Emperor—through the furious and jealous attack of a rival—was at this moment more worthy of a good woman's regard than he had been in the flush of his success and of his arrogance, for his one thought was of the Emperor and what he could no longer do for him. He tried to move and could not: "The Emperor's orders!" came at times with pathetic persistence from his lips, and Crystal—woman-like—tried to soothe and comfort him in his failure, even though his triumph would only have aroused her scorn.