Bois-Doré made his confession and described faithfully the vision he had had at Brilbault, declaring, however, that, until the appearance of D'Alvimar's profile on the wall, he would have sworn that he had not dreamed of the uproar and the shadows, which might well have been perfectly real.
He had the mortification of detecting an incredulous smile on the faces of his two auditors; but when he had told them what had happened previously at the gardener's cottage, and had shown them D'Alvimar's notes, his friends became grave and attentive once more.
"Cousin," said Guillaume, "so far as these notes are concerned, it will be easy for me to authenticate them and to furnish you with specimens of Monsieur d'Alvimar's handwriting and his signature. Meanwhile, I assure you that these pages are in his hand. Put them with your own papers and wait, before announcing the traitor's death, until you are officially called to account therefor."
Such was not Monsieur Robin's advice. He criticised the policy of keeping the fact secret, the precautions taken to conceal the body, and the prolongation of the mystery at a time when everybody in the neighborhood was prepossessed in favor of the lovely Mario, touched by the story of his adventures, and disposed to curse the cowardly assassins of his father.
Bois-Doré would have followed this advice instantly, except for his unwillingness to displease Guillaume, who persisted in his first opinion.
"My dear neighbor," he said, "I would come over to your views and retract the advice I have given the marquis, except for one thought which has occurred to me, and which I beg you to weigh seriously; it is this: that it is unnecessary for the marquis to accuse himself of killing a man who may not be dead at all."
Messieurs Robin and Bois-Doré made a gesture of surprise, and Guillaume continued:
"I have two strong reasons for thinking and saying this: the first is that a man was carried away from La Caille-Bottée's garden, who, although run through by a lusty sword-thrust, may not have breathed his last; the second is that our marquis, whose courage is not of the sort that anyone can doubt, recognized his enemy's face at Brilbault."
Monsieur Robin reflected in silence; Bois-Doré collected his memories of the preceding night, and tried to disentangle them from the bewilderment that had then taken possession of him; then he said:
"If Monsieur d'Alvimar is dead, he did not die on the field of battle at La Rochaille, nor at the gardener's cottage, but at Brilbault, no later than last evening. He died in I know not what strange and brutal company, but attended by a priest who may have been Monsieur Poulain, and by a servant who must have been old Sancho. There was nothing in the confused shadows which I saw to contradict these suppositions, and the one thing that I saw most clearly and distinctly was a crucifix as sharply outlined as the cross on an escutcheon, and under the right branch of that crucifix the emaciated, fleshless face of Monsieur d'Alvimar. The features seemed somewhat agitated at first, while a voice repeated the prayers for the dying; faint groans, which I had heard throughout the revel, I continued to hear during the prayer. Then the groans ceased, the face became like stone; you would have said that the lines were petrified on the wall which showed me their reflection. The head was no longer bent forward but thrown back, and then——"