“Why, then, it must have been you, sir, who fired that unlucky shot! You all but killed my poor invalid.”
“Eh! I fired into the air!”
“If you had actually hit Madame la Comtesse, you would have done less harm to her.”
“Well, well, then, we can neither of us complain, for the sight of the Countess all but killed my friend, M. de Sucy.”
“The Baron de Sucy, is it possible?” cried the doctor, clasping his hands. “Has he been in Russia? was he in the Beresina?”
“Yes,” answered d’Albon. “He was taken prisoner by the Cossacks and sent to Siberia. He has not been back in this country a twelvemonth.”
“Come in, monsieur,” said the other, and he led the way to a drawing-room on the ground-floor. Everything in the room showed signs of capricious destruction.
Valuable china jars lay in fragments on either side of a clock beneath a glass shade, which had escaped. The silk hangings about the windows were torn to rags, while the muslin curtains were untouched.
“You see about you the havoc wrought by a charming being to whom I have dedicated my life. She is my niece; and though medical science is powerless in her case, I hope to restore her to reason, though the method which I am trying is, unluckily, only possible to the wealthy.”
Then, like all who live much alone and daily bear the burden of a heavy trouble, he fell to talk with the magistrate. This is the story that he told, set in order, and with the many digressions made by both teller and hearer omitted.