I wasted no time in returning to Clélie, having indeed some hope that I might find the poor fellow still occupying his former position upon the staircase. But in this I met with disappointment: he was gone and I could only relate to my wife what I had heard, and trust to her discretion. As I had expected, she was deeply moved.
“It is terrible,” she said. “And it is also a delicate and difficult matter to manage. But what can one do? There is only one thing—I who am a woman, and have suffered privation myself, may venture.”
Accordingly, she took her departure for the floor above. I heard her light summons upon the door of one of the rooms, but heard no reply. At last, however, the door was opened gently, and with a hesitance that led me to imagine that it was Clélie herself who had pushed it open, and immediately afterward I was sure that she had uttered an alarmed exclamation. I stepped out upon the landing and called to her in a subdued tone,—
“Clélie,” I said, “did I hear you speak?”
“Yes,” she returned from within the room. “Come at once, and bring with you some brandy.”
In the shortest possible time I had joined her in the room, which was bare, cold, and unfurnished—a mere garret, in fact, containing nothing but a miserable bedstead. Upon the floor, near the window, knelt Clélie, supporting with her knee and arm the figure of the young man she had come to visit.
“Quick with the brandy,” she exclaimed. “This may be a faint, but it looks like death.” She had found the door partially open, and receiving no answer to her knock, had pushed it farther ajar, and caught a glimpse of the fallen figure, and hurried to its assistance.
To be as brief as possible, we both remained at the young man's side during the whole of the night. As the concierge had said, he was perishing from inanition, and the physician we called in assured us that only the most constant attention would save his life.
“Monsieur,” Clélie explained to him upon the first occasion upon which he opened his eyes, “you are ill and alone, and we wish to befriend you.” And he was too weak to require from her anything more definite.
Physically he was a person to admire. In health his muscular power must have been immense. He possessed the frame of a young giant, and yet there was in his face a look of innocence and inexperience amazing even when one recollected his youth.