Medallion paused, then came to Valmond and said: “Your Excellency, if ever you need me, let me know. I’d do much to prove myself no enemy.”
Valmond gave him his hand courteously, bowed, and, beckoning a soldier to take his horse, walked towards his tent. He swayed slightly as he went, then a trembling seized him. He staggered as he entered the door of the tent, and Parpon, seeing, ran forward and caught him in his arms. The little man laid him down, felt his pulse, his heart, saw a little black stain on his lips, and cried out in a great fear:
“My God! The black fever! Ah, my Napoleon!”
Valmond lay in a burning stupor; and word went abroad that he might die; but Parpon insisted that he would be well presently, and at first would let no one but the Little Chemist and the Cure come in or near the tent.
CHAPTER XIII
The sickness had come like a whirlwind: when it passed, what would be left? The fight went on in the quiet hills—a man of no great stature or strength, against a monster who racked him in a fierce embrace. A thousand scenes flashed through Valmond’s brain, before his eyes, while the great wheel of torture went round, and he was broken, broken-mended and broken again, upon it. Spinning—he was for ever spinning, like a tireless moth through a fiery air; and the world went roaring past. In vain he cried to the wheelman to stop the wheel: there was no answer. Would those stars never cease blinking in and out, or the wind stop whipping the swift clouds past? So he went on, endless years, driving through space, some terrible intangible weight dragging at his heart, and all his body panting as it spun.
Grotesque faces came and went, and bright-eyed women floated by, laughing at him, beckoning to him; but he could not come, because of this endless going. He heard them singing, he felt the divine notes in his battered soul; he tried to weep for the hopeless joy of it; but the tears came no higher than his throat. Why did they mock him so? At last, all the figures merged into one, and she had the face—ah, he had seen it centuries ago!—of Madame Chalice. Strange that she was so young still, and that was so long past—when he stood on a mountain, and, clambering a high wall of rock, looked over into a happy No-man’s Land.
Why did the face elude him so, flashing in and out of the vapours? Why was its look sorrowful and distant? And yet there was that perfect smile, that adorable aspect of the brow, that light in the deep eyes. He tried to stop the eternal spinning, but it went remorselessly on; and presently the face was gone; but not till it had given him ease of his pain.
Then came fighting, fighting, nothing but fighting—endless charges of cavalry, continuous wheelings and advancings and retreatings, and the mad din of drums; afterwards, in a swift quiet, the deep, even thud of the horses’ hoofs striking the ground. Flags and banners flaunted gaily by. How the helmets flashed, and the foam flew from the bits! But those flocks of blackbirds flying over the heads of the misty horsemen—they made him shiver. Battle, battle, battle, and death, and being born—he felt it all.