Dorothy gazed; her eyes missed no slightest movement. Like her, the young men remained motionless, with drawn faces. The Italian, however, just sketched the sign of the cross.
"He's alive!" broke in Maître Delarue. "Look; he's looking at us."
A strange gaze. It did not shift; it did not try to see. The gaze of the newly born, animated by no thought. Vague, unconscious, it shunned the light of the lamps and seemed ready to be extinguished in a new sleep. On the other hand the rest of the body became instinct with life, as if the blood resumed its normal course under the impulsion of a heart which again began to beat. The arms and the hands moved with purposed movements. Then suddenly the legs slipped off the bed. The bust was raised. After several attempts the man sat up.
Then they saw him face to face; and since one of the young men raised his lamp that its light might not shine in his eyes, that lamp lit up on the wall of the alcove above the bed the portrait of which the Marquis had made mention. They could then perceive that it was indeed the portrait of the man. The same enormous brow, the same eyes deeply sunk in their orbits, the same high cheek-bones, the same bony jaw, the same projecting ears. But the man, contrary to the prediction in the letter, had greatly aged and grown considerably thinner, for the portrait represented a nobleman of good appearance and sufficiently plump.
Twice he tried to stand upright without succeeding. He was too weak; his legs refused to support him. He seemed also to be laboring under a heavy oppression and to breathe with difficulty, either because he had lost the habit or because he needed more air. Dorothy observed two planks nailed to the wall, pointed them out to Dario and Webster, and signed to them to pull them down. It was easy to do so, for they were not nailed very firmly to the wall; and they uncovered a small round window, a bull's-eye rather, not more than a foot or fifteen inches across.
A whiff of fresh air blew into the room all round the man sitting on the bed; and for all that he appeared to have no understanding of anything, he turned towards the window, and opening his mouth, drew in great breaths.
All these trifling incidents were spread over a considerable time. The astonished witnesses of them had a feeling that they were taking part in the mysterious phases of a resurrection which they were wholly unable to consider final. Every minute gained by this living dead man appeared to them a new miracle which passed all imagining, and they hoped for the inevitable event which would restore things to their natural order, and which would be as it were the disarticulation and crumbling away of this incredible automaton.
Dorothy stamped her foot impatiently, as if she were struggling against herself and trying to shake off a torpor.
She turned away from this sight which fascinated her, and her face took on an expression of such profound thought, that her companions withdrew their eyes from the man to watch her. Her eyes were seeking something. Their blue irises became of a deeper blue. They seemed to see beyond what ordinary eyes see and to pursue the truth into more distant regions.
At the end of a minute or two she said: