“No,” she said. “I’ll get his coffee. Let me go—O, let me go! I shall be right in a minute”—and she went hurriedly from the room.
A minute later Louis-Marie came down, his haggard face bright-eyed out of fever. But there was an expression on it such as one might imagine in the face of a convicted felon summoned to hear his reprieve.
“Such dreams, Gaston,” he said, crossing the room eagerly: “but the dream of all was the dream that went to bed and woke with me. I thought I had saved a life, Gaston.”
“That was no dream, my friend.”
Louis-Marie came and fondled him, smiling all the while. His actions were marked by a curious haste and agitation, as if in everything he were restless to hurry conclusions, to spurn the passing moment, to urge on the hands of time.
“Wasn’t it?” he said. “What a meeting, dear Gaston, my brother! Who would have dreamt of that! And the occasion! We are always saving lives between us, it seems—you more than I, I expect. Isn’t it strange? I know so little about you, and you my blood-brother. Do you always lodge here when you come to Turin?”
“Generally.”
“Your life, your habits, your story are all a shadow to me. I—”
Cartouche interrupted him.
“My story is told in a word, Louis-Marie. Would you like to hear it?”