We drive to the office of police. A little crowd follows us. I am able to give some formal evidence. Then I am taken home. The unfortunate man is placed under proper restraint. There is a great buzz of excitement in Bénévent.
Nobody recognises Marc; he is so changed. I do not disclose his name. It is better to wait the course of events.
After the fearful peril of the last hour, I am astonished to find myself alive. I am alive, and thankful.
After the struggle in the defile I was unable to leave my bed for some days. I had been much tried both in mind and body; but I received the kindest attention from the good friends around me.
In these little places every trifle creates a mighty stir. All Bénévent came to inquire after my health. I had been killed. No; well, then, nearly done to death by a murderous assassin escaped from the galleys. The police knew him. It was the same man who five years before had attempted the life of the Emperor. He had a homicidal mania. There were a hundred different reports—none of them true.
I was examined and re-examined; examined again, and cross-examined. You have formed the conclusion that I am a witness, if I choose, out of whom not much can be got. I battled the Maire, the prefect, the police. I had been attacked by a man who carried a pistol, and I was rescued by some persons returning from M. André’s château in a chaise. What could be more simple? And these are the facts duly entered—wrapped in plenty of official verbiage—in police record.
I had everybody’s sympathy. I had something better. Sympathy one can’t spend; francs one can. A subscription was raised for my benefit. I was compelled to accept the money—a thousand francs of it. The rest—some odd hundreds of francs and a bundle of warm clothing, intended for me by some Bénévent valetudinarian, together with thirteen copies of religious books and two rosaries—I presented to the cure for distribution among the poor of his parish.
But I had a weight on my mind even francs could not remove—Marc and Cécile.
She, poor woman, was happy in being rich; in having fine dresses and gaiety; in being an old man’s idol. It is so with women. She was, I found, the donor of some of the religious books and of one of the two rosaries. Perhaps, then, at the château all was not happiness for the mistress. At times she still mourned for Marc.
And Marc?