It was a carriage rapidly driving up the distant avenue to the château.
It was my father, I felt sure. A long time passed, and then I heard steps on the drawbridge; voices sounded from below. Then came a step on the stairs; my door opened, and a gentleman stood framed in the doorway.
I shall never forget my first sight of the Vicomte Armand de Chatellan, my father's cousin on the Saluces' side, and my future guardian.
I had never seen him before. He was not, indeed, a sight to come often in a child's way, this flower of the boulevards, seventy if a day, scented, exquisite, with a large impassive, evenly coloured red face, the face of a Roman consul, in which were set the blue eyes of a good-tempered child.
This great gentleman, who left the pavements of Paris only once a year for a three weeks' visit to his estates in Auvergne, had travelled express from Paris to tell a child that its father was lying dead, shot through the heart by the Baron Imhoff. And this is how he did it: He made a kindly little bow to me, and indicated Joubert to place a chair by the bedside.
"And how are we this evening?" asked he, taking my wrist as a physician might have done to feel my pulse.
I did not know who he was. I had vague suspicions that he was another doctor. Never for a moment did I dream he was the bearer of evil tidings. I said I was better—that old reply of the sick child—and he talked on various subjects: the airiness of the room, the beauty of the woods, and so forth. Then, to Joubert: "Distinctly feverish. Must not be disturbed to-night. Ah, yes, in the morning; that will be different. And no more tumbling into gravel pits," finished this astute old gentleman as he glanced back at me before leaving the room.
Then the opiate closed its lid on me, and I did not even hear the departure of the Vicomte Armand de Chatellan, my future guardian, who shuffled out of the unpleasant business of grieving my heart on the same evening that he shuffled into my life, he and his grand, queer, quaint, and sometimes despicable personality, perfumed with vervain and the cigars of the Café de Paris.