"My son," he said, "is there anything that I can do for you?"
"This is St. Helier, is it not?" answered the other in a dulled voice, without looking up. "If you could kindly take me to where my mother lives. I . . . I have been ill . . . and I do not think I could find the way."
The Bishop paused a moment, then he said, very gently, "This is not Jersey, my child; it is Portsmouth."
"Portsmouth," repeated the émigré, in the same uninterested tone. "Not Jersey—Portsmouth. But she is not at Portsmouth——" Then he looked up, and his eyes, full of fever though they were, knew the man who was speaking to him for a bishop of his own Church.
"But they shot you at Vannes, Monseigneur, with Sombreuil!"
The old man guessed to whom he was referring. "God rest his soul!" he said, signing himself. "But you mistake, my son; I am not the Bishop of Dol, and this is England. What are you going to do?"
The Frenchman got to his feet. "I?" he said, and laughed a little. "Why, I should have been shot at Auray, Monseigneur . . . or at Quiberon. . . . It would have been better. . . . But I am here. . . . God knows why." He sat down again on the bollard.
Monseigneur beckoned to his Grand Vicar. Then he turned again to the émigré. "My son," he said, "you will come home with me. It is not far. Come, take my arm!"
And the émigré obediently took that ridiculous support (the Grand Vicar, however, walking in readiness on the other side) and so came, with difficulty and without speech, to the little hired house where the Bishop lived.
In the parlour Monseigneur said to him, "And now perhaps you had better tell us your name?"