"Augustin," replied the guest, and, turning suddenly faint or giddy with the word, collapsed like a log against the Grand Vicar, who, being fortunately nearly as tall as he, and robust to boot, was not felled to the floor as the Bishop would undoubtedly have been.
(2)
The good Bishop sat all that night by the bedside of his guest, and all night long La Vireville tossed and talked, so that, being undeterred by his occasional lapses into language of a vigour which would have shocked the Grand Vicar, the Bishop learnt many things. The empty left sleeve indicated, as he had of course supposed, that the émigré had lost his arm—or most of it, for it had been amputated some way above the elbow. That wound was healed, but his whole body still bore the marks of what the sea and the rocks between them had done to it, and it was to one of these injuries, to the head, that the surgeon summoned next morning was inclined to attribute his sudden lapse into insensibility and his present state of semi-stupor.
"He was not really fit to have made the voyage from Houat," he said in conclusion; "but from what one hears of conditions in the Ile d'Yeu he is certainly better in England." He was thinking of the privations which, since the end of September, General Doyle's little force had been undergoing in the latter island.
When the surgeon had gone the old Bishop said to his Grand Vicar, with his customary gentle resolution, "We must try to find our guest's mother in Jersey, of whom he spoke on the quay yesterday."
"But we do not know his surname, Monseigneur," objected the younger priest, "unless by any chance 'Augustin' is his family and not his Christian name. And there are so many French exiles in Jersey."
"His mother evidently lives at St. Helier," replied the Bishop, "and that gives us something to start from. I shall write to the Prince de Bouillon and ask him to make inquiries. . . . Also I shall have M. Augustin moved into my bedroom. He will be more comfortable there, and if, as I suspect, he is going to be ill for some time, it is a sunny room, which is important."
As the Grand Vicar and the housekeeper alike knew that it was of no use arguing with Monseigneur, especially when his own discomfort was in question, they did not waste their energies in conflict, and La Vireville, still only half-conscious, was transferred to the modest episcopal apartment.
(3)
The volleys that rang out that August evening over the Bay of Quiberon had left one man out of the doomed thirty untouched by any bullet—preserved as by a miracle. The miracle was wrought by greed, and the man—as may be guessed—was Fortuné de la Vireville.