The Vicomte looked up slowly. It seemed that his eyelids were heavy, requiring an effort to lift them.
“I do not like to hear the rooks call—that is all,” he said.
The other turned away his soft, slow glance, the glance that had failed to overcome Christian Vellacott's quiet defiance—
“Nor I,” he said. “It makes one remember.”
There was a short silence, and then the Jesuit spoke—sharply and suddenly.
“Sit down, you fool!” he said. “You are fainting.”
The Vicomte obeyed, and at the same moment the door opened and the tobacconist appeared, pushing before him a mattress.
The Jesuit laid aside his hat, revealing the tonsure gleaming whitely amidst his jetty hair, and helped to lay the mattress upon the table. Then the two men, the Provincial and the tobacconist of the Rue St. Gingolphe, lifted the wounded aristocrat gently and placed him upon the improvised bed. True to his blood, the Vicomte d'Audierne uttered no sound of agony, but as his brother began to unbutton the butcher's blouse in which he was disguised he fainted quietly. Presently the doctor arrived. He was quite a young man, with shifting grey eyes, and he saluted the Provincial with a nervous obsequity which was unpleasant to look upon. The deftness with which he completed the task of laying bare the wound was notable. His fingers were too clever to be quite honest. When, however, he was face to face with the little blue-rimmed orifice that disfigured the Vicomte's muscular chest, the expression of his face—indeed his whole manner—changed. His eyes lost their shiftiness—he seemed to forget the presence of the great man standing at the other side of the table.
While he was selecting a probe from his case of instruments the Vicomte d'Audierne opened his eyes.
“Ah!” said the doctor, noting this at once. “You got this on the Boulevard?”