Tredegar went out, and after a few moments returned and said:
“He seems to be sleeping soundly, or else to be sunk into a deep stupor; indeed I am not physician enough to say which. But in either case, I think, if you come in quietly, you can do him no harm.”
Then they all went into the wounded man’s chamber and stood at his bedside, and looked at him.
There he lay, less like a sick or wounded patient than the laid-out corpse of a dead man. His hair was cut short and his head bandaged with wet linen cloths. His face was deadly pallid, with a greenish white hue; his eyes were closed and sunken; his lips compressed; and his features still and stiff. His chest was also bandaged with wet linen cloths, and his shoulders and chest wrapped in a sheet instead of a shirt, for the convenience of frequently changing the dressings of his wound. His form was still and stiff as his features.
On seeing this ghastly sight, Dick uttered an irrepressible exclamation of horror. Even the veteran-soldier groaned.
“It is not half as bad as it looks,” said Francis encouragingly. “There is nothing in the world makes a man look so death-like as these white swaddling-clothes, that put us in mind of winding-sheets. The surgeon says he will do well.”
“Ah? who is attending him?” inquired the General.
“Prince Ernest left his own physician here to look after him. He is Doctor Dietz, a graduate of one of the medical colleges of Vienna—which, I am told, are now really the best, and are destined soon to be acknowledged as the best medical schools in the world.”
“And this eminent surgeon says that the wounded man will do well?”
“These were his very words.”