Towards dawn the Marquis came into the room again. All was quiet but the fire, and at first he could not see his brother anywhere. Then for a second or two his heart stood still, for he perceived Armand stretched motionless on the floor in front of the hearth, and there was something ominous in his attitude, in the pool of deep colour round his body, in the living, moving stains of crimson on the breast of his doublet....
It was only a moment's illusion, gone as the elder man came quickly towards the fire. Worn out with emotion, Armand had evidently flung himself down there, had fallen profoundly asleep where he lay on the red Eastern rug, and the firelight winked on the jewels of his masquerade. Nevertheless, as he lay with sealed eyes at Emmanuel's feet, clad in the dress of that period of violent deaths, with one arm outflung on the parquet, his upturned face haggard and unfamiliar in the close-fitting ruff, he looked so lifeless that the Marquis was glad to think that Prosper had abstracted the poniard from its sheath.
Though, indeed, he knew his brother too well to imagine that he would ever dream of sacrificing his life, even for the person he loved best at the moment. A faintly cynical but not untender smile came to Emmanuel's lips as he stood there. "Sleep well, my brother," he said under his breath, and went very quietly out of the room.
(6)
"Cholera? Oh dear no, nor anything like it," said the doctor next morning to the anxious cousins. "Nervous shock, a touch of fever. I have let him blood. Keep him quiet and he will be all right in a couple of days. I wish we were all as far from the grave. But, Messieurs, as for the cholera, though M. le Comte has it not, we are all going to see more of it, I doubt, than we shall like..."
"You have told him, I suppose, that Madame de Vigerie is likely to recover?" asked Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon as the doctor left the room.
"Yes," said Emmanuel, "and also that it has already been arranged for my sister and the children to go to Plaisance at once."
He went in again to his brother, in the priest's own, narrow, cell-like bedroom with its carved prie-dieu, its sacred prints and its agonised ivory crucifix. Armand, pale, but no longer ghastly, was lying back in an arm-chair without his doublet, his knees wrapped in a quilt, with a bandaged left arm to testify to the doctor's activity. He smiled at his visitor.
"Mon vieux, what made you think I had the cholera? I was never so well in my life—since your news, bien entendu. Do you think Prosper will tell me how many candles I should put up to Our Lady—but perhaps St. Roch or St. Sebastian would be more appropriate. Now that old butcher has gone I must dress and go round to the Chaussée d'Antin; but I have no clothes suitable to the streets in daylight. Will Prosper lend me a cassock, think you? I believe I was rather rude to him last night, but his duty as a Christian will oblige him to forgive me.... Sais-tu, Emmanuel, that the cholera, if only it strike hard enough, may be the best ally that Henri V could have? And how can I work for Henri V sitting here in my shirt among these objects of piety? As well be a sacristan...."
CHAPTER XIX