“What’s that? can I!” replied the tailor; “why, if I couldn’t, I’d go with you all the same. As if I would leave in this condition an excellent neighbor of mine who paid me forty francs in advance! Prout! you don’t know me!”
They bandaged my head and helped me into the cab. Pettermann seated himself opposite me and we returned to Paris.
On the way, my wound occupied my attention much less than the meeting I had had. I asked Pettermann if he had not seen a woman riding past me when they took me up and carried me away.
“When you were thrown down,” said the tailor, “I was within thirty yards of you. I was walking, loafing, I had nothing to do. However, I did go to your room this morning, monsieur, to ask you for your cloth; but I never find you in the morning and at night I can’t find your door.”
“That isn’t what I asked you.”
“True. Well, then, I was walking, and I had just noticed some ladies pass on horseback. Prout! but they rode finely! Other horses came along and I stepped to one side; and it was then that I saw you. They shouted: ‘Look out!’ I don’t know what you were looking at, but you didn’t move; and yet I said to myself: ‘That gentleman isn’t deaf, for he heard me sing well enough.’ Still the horses came on. I shouted ‘Look out!’ to you myself, and I sung out to the riders to stop; but prout! you were already on the ground, and with a famous scar! The young men stopped then. I already had you in my arms. The man who knocked you down was in despair, I must do him justice. We carried you to the nearest café; and when I said that I was your neighbor and that I knew you, they sent for a cab; and then you opened your eyes. But never mind! you got a rousing kick!”
“And while I was unconscious, you saw no other people near me? Those ladies on horseback—did not one of them come back?”
“No, monsieur; there was no other lady near you except the one that keeps the café; but she washed your head; oh! she didn’t spare the water!”
I said no more. I was beginning to suffer terribly; the carriage made me sick, my head was on fire and my brain in a whirl. At last we reached my home. Pettermann and the concierge carried me upstairs, put me to bed, and went to call a doctor. I had a violent fever; soon I was unable to reply to the people about me; I did not know them.
One evening I opened my heavy eyes and glanced about my room. It was dimly lighted by a lamp. I saw Pettermann sitting at a table, with his head resting on one of his hands, and his eyes fastened upon a watch which he held in the other. I called him feebly; he heard me, uttered a joyful cry, dropped the watch, and ran to my bed.