However, whilst he was advising them to go and take their seats in the carriage, he recognised Doctor Chassaigne hastily approaching. “Ah! my dear doctor,” he said, “I was waiting for you. I should have been sorry indeed to have gone away without embracing you.”
But the old doctor, who was trembling with emotion, interrupted him. “Yes, yes, I am late. But ten minutes ago, just as I arrived, I caught sight of that eccentric fellow, the Commander, and had a talk with him over yonder. He was sneering at the sight of your people taking the train again to go and die at home, when, said he, they ought to have done so before coming to Lourdes. Well, all at once, while he was talking like this, he fell on the ground before me. It was his third attack of paralysis; the one he had long been expecting.”
“Oh! mon Dieu,” murmured Abbe Judaine, who heard the doctor, “he was blaspheming. Heaven has punished him.”
M. de Guersaint and Marie were listening, greatly interested and deeply moved.
“I had him carried yonder, into that shed,” continued the doctor. “It is all over; I can do nothing. He will doubtless be dead before a quarter of an hour has gone by. But I thought of a priest, and hastened up to you.”
Then, turning towards Abbe Judaine, M. Chassaigne added: “Come with me, Monsieur le Cure; you know him. We cannot let a Christian depart unsuccoured. Perhaps he will be moved, recognise his error, and become reconciled with God.”
Abbe Judaine quickly followed the doctor, and in the rear went M. de Guersaint, leading Marie and Pierre, whom the thought of this tragedy impassioned. All five entered the goods shed, at twenty paces from the crowd which was still bustling and buzzing, without a soul in it expecting that there was a man dying so near by.
In a solitary corner of the shed, between two piles of sacks filled with oats, lay the Commander, on a mattress borrowed from the Hospitality reserve supply. He wore his everlasting frock-coat, with its buttonhole decked with a broad red riband, and somebody who had taken the precaution to pick up his silver-knobbed walking-stick had carefully placed it on the ground beside the mattress.
Abbe Judaine at once leant over him. “You recognise us, you can hear us, my poor friend, can’t you?” asked the priest.
Only the Commander’s eyes now appeared to be alive; but they were alive, still glittering brightly with a stubborn flame of energy. The attack had this time fallen on his right side, almost entirely depriving him of the power of speech. He could only stammer a few words, by which he succeeded in making them understand that he wished to die there, without being moved or worried any further. He had no relative at Lourdes, where nobody knew anything either of his former life or his family. For three years he had lived there happily on the salary attached to his little post at the station, and now he at last beheld his ardent, his only desire, approaching fulfilment—the desire that he might depart and fall into the eternal sleep. His eyes expressed the great joy he felt at being so near his end.