“Ma foi, I scarcely know,” replied Madame Gloannec. “We are but ignorant people, mon père, and could not have a surgeon. And he was desperately hurt. At first, when Mathurin and Marie-Pierre brought him in, six weeks ago, with a horrible wound right through his body, we thought he was dying. We did what we could; then he got a little better, then worse, then better again, and so it has gone on until the last few days, when he has been much worse. Yesterday we were sure that he was sinking. So, knowing that your Reverence was about to pass through on the way to Ste. Reine, I asked him if he would like to see a priest, and he said yes. He was quite conscious half an hour ago, and I think he has little pain now, but he has suffered very much.” The tears were in her eyes as she added that if the priest wished to give him extreme unction the sacred oils were still in the little church near by, and could be speedily fetched. The tabernacle was empty. But, since the army had crossed the Loire, M. des Graves had always carried the Blessed Sacrament with him, and he had but to despatch Marie-Pierre to the church, which was done.
Mounting the narrow, ladder-like stairs after Madame Gloannec, the priest found himself in the space under the roof, used, as always in Brittany, for a loft and store-room. In one corner was a large pile of fodder, into which, at their approach, a mouse ran squeaking. Strings of onions hung from the sloping rafters; a brazier, now nearly extinct, had been lit to dispel the cold, and it was evident that its smoke escaped but ill by the hole which had been knocked in the roof for that purpose. One small window let in a muffled daylight, and near it, on a miserable pallet bed, under a dirty and faded coverlet, was the outline of a human form, lying, slightly huddled up, on its right side, with its face turned away from the door, and consequently invisible.
Madame Gloannec placed a crazy chair at the head of the bed for the priest, and going round to the other side of the pallet bent down.
“Mon enfant,” she said in a tone of extraordinary gentleness, and as if she were indeed speaking to a child—even to her own child—“mon enfant, here is the good priest come to you. You wish him to confess you, do you not?”
Evidently she received an answer in the affirmative, though none was audible to M. des Graves; and after a moment’s hesitation she slipped her arms under the dying man, gently lifting him a little so that he should lie on his back. And as his head sank back in profile on the low pillow M. des Graves recognised him.
He was terribly altered; his face, with its shadows, its pinched nostrils and hollow temples, waxlike in pallor and transparency. Round the mouth and on the brow was scored the track of past pain, but what every lineament bore most plainly was the stamp of an exhaustion so profound that it seemed as if physical suffering must be over now for ever—could have no more power over the body on which it had so fully worked its will. Indeed, after the first lightning shock of recognition the priest asked himself if they could really be Louis’ features, so completely had all trace of the lazy vitality which was once their characteristic and their charm ebbed away from their sharpened contours.
Madame Gloannec, occupied in arranging the pillow and the coverings, did not hear the stifled exclamation which rose to M. des Graves’ lips. A momentary fierce conflict shook him between his instinctive craving to bend at once over Louis, to call him by his name, to assure himself if indeed he were dying, as they said, to tell him that he was near him, to comfort him . . . and the conviction that nothing personal must be suffered to distract the young man at this supreme moment, and that the poor remnants of his strength had to be used for something else than a greeting which would shake and try them. And the priest was victorious over the friend. M. des Graves deliberately set his chair where Louis could not see him without completely turning his head, an action which was probably quite beyond his powers, and pulling out a shabby stole, sat down. Madame Gloannec crept from the room.
The roughly-shorn brown head—they had cut off his long hair—moved very slightly on the pillow, and the half-shut, dark-lidded eyes opened.
“I am here, my son,” said M. des Graves instantly, praying that Louis might not know his voice. “I will say your Confiteor for you, since you are very ill, and afterwards, my child, accuse yourself of such sins as you can remember.”
Louis did not know the familiar voice. He sighed, moved his hands a little on the coverlet, and began. His own voice was as changed as the rest of him. For a few minutes it went on, weak and trailing, halting for breath, stumbling over words, and then began to show a significant tendency to repeat the same phrases over and over again.