"At length I see you! I hold you! I have you!" cried La Louve, receiving Martial in her arms with joy and savage energy; then sustaining him, almost carrying him, she led him to a seat placed in the corridor.
During some moments Martial remained weak and feeble, endeavoring to recover from this violent shock, which had exhausted his failing strength. La Louve saved her lover at the moment when, in a state of despair, he felt himself about to die, less from the want of food than from the deprivation of air, impossible to be renewed in a small room without a chimney, without any aperture, and hermetically closed through the atrocious foresight of Calabash, who had stopped up with old linen even the smallest fissures of the door and window.
Palpitating with happiness and anguish, her eyes wet with tears, La Louve, on her knees, watched the smallest movements of Martial. By degrees he seemed to recover, as he breathed the pure and salubrious air. After a slight shudder, he raised his weary head, uttered a long sigh, and opened his eyes.
"Martial, it is I! your Louve; how do you feel?"
"Better," answered he, in a feeble voice.
"What will you have? water, vinegar?"
"No, no," cried Martial, less and less oppressed. "Air! oh, some air! nothing but air!"
La Louve, at the risk of cutting her hand, broke the glass of a window which she could not open without moving a heavy table.
"Now I breathe! I breathe! my head is relieved," said Martial, coming quite to himself. Then, as if for the first time recalling to mind the services she had rendered him, he cried, in a tone of ineffable gratitude, "Without you, I should have died, my good Louve!"
"Well, well; how are you now?"