The condition of the poor youth was really very critical; the abbe perceived this at a glance, but it was not hopeless.
“We will get him out of this,” he said, with a smile that reawakened hope.
And with the coolness of an old practitioner, he bled him freely, and ordered applications of ice to his head.
In a moment all the household were busied in fulfilling the cure’s orders. He took advantage of the opportunity to draw the baron aside in the embrasure of a window.
“What has happened?” he asked.
“A disappointment in love,” M. d’Escorval replied, with a despairing gesture. “Monsieur Lacheneur has refused the hand of his daughter, which I asked in behalf of my son. Maurice was to have seen Marie-Anne to-day. What passed between them I do not know. The result you see.”
The baroness re-entered the room, and the two men said no more. A truly funereal silence pervaded the apartment, broken only by the moans of Maurice.
His excitement instead of abating had increased in violence. Delirium peopled his brain with phantoms; and the name of Marie-Anne, Martial de Sairmeuse and Chanlouineau dropped so incoherently from his lips that it was impossible to read his thoughts.
How long that night seemed to M. d’Escorval and his wife, those only know who have counted each second beside the sick-bed of some loved one.
Certainly their confidence in the companion in their vigil was great; but he was not a regular physician like the other, the one whose coming they awaited.