How thin he was getting to look—how increasingly transparent—worse than when Laurent had first seen him lying there like . . . what was it he had looked like? A Crusader. . . . Had a Crusader ever been shot by his men? If so, they would have used bows and arrows . . . or was it arquebuses? What exactly was an arquebus? . . . Arques. What had happened at Arques . . .
He woke, to his dismay, to find his head down on his arm across the foot of his patient's bed. The birds were singing, and the hour for bouillon well past, but the wounded man was fortunately still asleep.
His own stolen slumber, however, had not refreshed Laurent, and, by the time that M. Perrelet appeared, he was wondering how he should ever get through the dressings. He always hated the business, and, now that he knew for certain who had made those wounds. . . . Then he was ashamed of what he termed his womanish feelings. It was not he who had to bear the pain morning after morning—and without a murmur, as La Rocheterie always did . . . as he wished sometimes he would not. But then all along he had never uttered a syllable of complaint at any physical stress. "I'll be as quick as I can," he heard M. Perrelet whisper to his patient as he took up the forceps.
. . . At least Laurent supposed that he was whispering—or was it because there was suddenly such a loud buzzing in his own ears? The surgeon's figure swelled to a large size; then receded till it was about the measure of a doll. But, not realizing in the least what was happening to him, Laurent still stood at his post with a face, though he did not know it, very similar in hue to that on the pillow.
The next thing of which he was fully conscious was that he was seated in a chair right away from the bed, at the open window, and that M. Perrelet, now restored to his everyday dimensions, was undoing the collar of his uniform.
"What is the matter?" asked the young man in a dazed way. "Why am I here?"
"Because I didn't want you fainting and falling across the bed," responded M. Perrelet briskly. "Luckily my patient called my attention to you just in time. Drink this, and sit there quietly."
"But——" protested Laurent.
"Drink this!" repeated M. Perrelet firmly.
And so the brandy which was poured out ready for L'Oiseleur was drunk by his nurse.