“Is there great danger?” asked I.
“The trouble would pass,” said he, “if you were stronger. Your life is worth fighting for, but it will be a struggle. That dungeon was slow poison. You must have a barber,” added he; “you are a ghost like this.”
I put my hand up, and I found my hair and beard were very long and almost white. Held against the light, my hands seemed transparent. “What means my coming here?” asked I.
He shook his head. “I am but a surgeon,” he answered shortly, meanwhile writing with a flourish on a piece of paper. When he had finished, he handed the paper to the soldier, with an order. Then he turned to go, politely bowing to me, but turned again and said, “I would not, were I you, trouble to plan escape these months yet. This is a comfortable prison, but it is easier coming in than going out. Your mind and body need quiet. You have, we know, a taste for adventure”—he smiled—“but is it wise to fight a burning powder magazine?”
“Thank you, monsieur,” said I, “I am myself laying the fuse to that magazine. It fights for me by-and-bye.”
He shrugged a shoulder. “Drink,” said he, with a professional air which almost set me laughing, “good milk and brandy, and think of nothing but that you are a lucky man to have this sort of prison.”
He bustled out in an important way, shaking his head and talking to himself. Tapping the chest of a bulky soldier who stood outside, he said brusquely, “Too fat, too fat; you’ll come to apoplexy. Go fight the English, lazy ruffian!”
The soldier gave a grunt, made a mocking gesture, and the door closed on me and my attendant. This fellow would not speak at all, and I did not urge him, but lay and watched the day decline and night come down. I was taken to a small alcove which adjoined the room, where I slept soundly.
Early the next morning I waked, and there was Voban sitting just outside the alcove, looking at me. I sat up in bed and spoke to him, and he greeted me in an absent sort of way. He was changed as much as I; he moved as one in a dream; yet there was the ceaseless activity of the eye, the swift, stealthy motion of the hand. He began to attend me, and I questioned him; but he said he had orders from mademoiselle that he was to tell nothing—that she, as soon as she could, would visit me.
I felt at once a new spring of life. I gave him the letter I had written, and bade him deliver it, which he promised to do; for though there was much in it not vital now, it was a record of my thoughts and feelings, and she would be glad of it, I knew. I pressed Voban’s hand in leaving, and he looked at me as if he would say something; but immediately he was abstracted, and left me like one forgetful of the world.