The beautiful girl, awaking, blinked her eyes, without understanding anything.
The assistants watched me, each behind a tree, and Lerne, leaning over my form, which was inert and dislocated, raised its head, in which a large hole was bleeding, and it was I! I! who had committed the mad act of injuring myself!
The Professor, who was feeling the victim all over, gave us his diagnosis:
“One arm dislocated, three ribs broken, fracture of the left clavicle and tibia. One recovers from that, but the kick on the head—Ah! that’s more serious. Hm! the brain is beaten to a pulp—it is destroyed—all will be over in half-an-hour. Finita la Commedia!”
I had to put my shoulder up against a tree, to save myself from falling. So my body, my country of countries, was going to die! It was all over! Now, for ever banished from my ruined dwelling. I had destroyed the first condition of my deliverance. It was all over. Lerne himself could do nothing; he had admitted as much. In half an hour all would be over!
But this brain! Perhaps he could.... Yes, he could do anything! Yes!
I drew near him. It was my last chance.
My uncle, who had turned to the girl, was speaking with grief in his voice.
“How you must have loved him, to love him still in his pitiable condition. My dear Emma, am I so little lovable, that you prefer such a wreck to me?”
Emma was weeping in her hands. How she must love him, looking turn by turn at the Professor, the dying creature and at me. How she must love him!