Finistère’s leader came out of this half coma of reminiscence with a start, and realised where he was, how far removed in time and space from the great Austrian disaster. He supposed that he was a trifle light-headed, for he had really felt that the next thing would be the arrival of those dim, frosty-breathed forms with lanterns, and Schnitterl’s voice, and he would be lifted to a stretcher and to a resumption of that life he thought he had done with at last. Josef had often told him how he had begged to be left there. But no . . . Et permaneo.
After all, he thought now, staring at the moving reflection of the candle on the ceiling, perhaps it was as well that he had not died there in the snow. There was a chance to-day of something better than mere personal heroism. Although nothing, nothing could undo the past nor give him back the dead, yet, if ever they met beyond the grave, he might have some guerdon to lay there at her feet—some tiny sprig of laurel that he could point to and say, “Valentine, I was not wholly what you thought me. . . .”
And for a moment he fancied that he saw her, shadowy and bejewelled, by the bed.
CHAPTER VII
THE CHURCH MILITANT
It was Lucien who rode to Lanvennec next morning for the surgeon. M. de Brencourt considered him discreet, and chose him rather than Artamène (who had besides been up all night) or any other of the younger men. But had he known that Lucien, though outwardly respectful and certainly of a fundamental prudence, was finishing in his head as he rode a short but very venomous epistle in verse, beginning, “Artus, le Judas de nos jours!” in which, somewhere near the end, “maître” rhymed with “traître,” he might have selected another messenger.
However, the surgeon came, concerned but unsuspicious, and, assisted by M. Chassin, did his unpleasant work with reasonable speed and deftness, producing at the end of it what he vaguely termed a “projectile” from a region of M. de Kersaint’s forearm which, on the contrary, he described with much exactitude. And while he was binding up the arm in question the Abbé quietly annexed the bullet—“as a souvenir,” he said.
But someone else seemed to be souvenir-hunting that morning. Not long after the Abbé had left his patient to repose and had established himself again in the outer room with his reflections and his breviary, the Comte de Brencourt appeared there.
“Is it out satisfactorily?” he enquired.
“Quite,” replied the priest. “A painful business; but nothing, mercifully, appears to be permanently injured. Yet the surgeon tells me that our leader”—he stressed the words a little—“came very near never having the use of his sword-arm again.”