The shock of this narrow escape did not exercise a particularly beneficial effect upon the convalescent, though a few days later he tried, after his old fashion, to laugh at the episode. It seemed also to have revived in his mind the memory of the past, to which he had as yet made little reference. One morning, after the wound-dressing, which was still an exhausting and sometimes a painful process, M. des Graves, having drawn the coverlet up to his chin, and otherwise, as he thought, disposed him to slumber, sat down to his office. The Vicomte lay and looked at him, as he often did, without saying anything. When M. des Graves had finished he was still so engaged, and suddenly said in a meditative voice:
“Father, did I make my confession when I was ill?”
The priest closed his book. “Yes, my child; and I gave you extreme unction.”
“It is odd,” commented Louis in a puzzled tone. “I don’t remember anything about it.”
“You were too ill,” said the priest gently.
“You thought I was dying, then?” pursued the Vicomte.
M. des Graves nodded.
A little of Louis’ former self appeared for a moment in his expression.
“I am sorry to have been such a malingerer,” he observed. “The fact is, that it is not as easy to die as one thinks. Just before that brute of a hussar ran me through I thought, ‘Two or three minutes, and it will be over.’ Ma foi, I was sure that it was, at the time! Imagine my surprise, then, when I came to for a moment, hours afterwards, in the dark and the rain, with a dead man across me. It must have been night; there was a moon, I think. . . . And in my hand, mon père, so they tell me, was a rosary; heaven knows how it got there. It was not mine, and seems unlikely to have been the property of any of Westermann’s parishioners. Well, then, I thought, this is certainly the end, unless it is purgatory already, for it was horribly cold, and I was not—not feeling my best. . . . Not a bit of it! I wake up again, jolting most disagreeably in a cart—and then again in this place . . . many times.” He broke off for a moment, and added: “I should have caused vastly less discomfort, both to myself and to other people, if I had finished, as my hussar intended, quietly under that tree.”
The priest looked at him intently for a moment. “Madame Gloannec tells me,” he said at last, “that before I came you suffered so much pain that she could not always bear to stay and see it. And I could have guessed it for myself. . . . Were you conscious then?”