Early the next morning, Ménard and the young count met in the room where they were accustomed to meet for breakfast. But Dubourg did not appear.
"Can it be that he stayed out all night?" asked Frédéric.
"I beg your pardon, monsieur," said one of the servants of the hotel; "monsieur le baron came in about three o'clock this morning; he seemed very tired, and he is still in bed."
"What folly to sit up all night when we were to start to-day! But where in the devil has he been?—Go and tell him that we are waiting for him."
After some time, the servant returned and announced that monsieur le baron was sick and could not rise.
"The rascal must have been drunk last night," thought Frédéric; and, followed by Ménard, who began by rubbing his nose and temples with vinegar to ward off contagion, he went to Dubourg's bedroom. They found him in bed; he had pulled his nightcap over his eyes and tied his handkerchief over it, and his face wore such a piteous expression, that one would have thought that he had been confined to his bed in agony for three months.
Ménard halted in the middle of the room and held a smelling-bottle to his nose, saying in an undertone to Frédéric.
"Mon Dieu! how he has changed!"
"What's the matter with you, in heaven's name, my poor Dubourg?" said Frédéric, taking the hand of the sick man, who had employed every known means to give himself an attack of fever.