"I forbid you to do it!" replied Léodgard, angrily. "Let no one dare to leave the house! I have been wounded—in a duel; but it is a slight wound, and I wish no one to know that I fought. The man who forgets my orders will be dismissed instantly.—Go now and tell the countess."
The servant woke Marie, and she stole softly into her mistress's room to give her the message. When she learned that her husband had returned to the hôtel, but that he had returned wounded, Bathilde hurriedly slipped on a loose garment and went at once to the bedside of the man whom she had never ceased to love.
The sight of Bathilde seemed now to allay the count's pain; he tried to smile at her, and said in a faint voice:
"Close the doors; I wish to be alone with you."
"But you are wounded, monsieur le comte; should we not send for a surgeon first of all?"
"No, madame.—If you wish to gratify me, do only what I ask you to do. We are quite alone, are we not?"
"Yes, monsieur."
"Give me some of that cordial—in that phial on the table yonder. It is what the doctor gave me when I was so ill—some time ago."
Bathilde at once gave Léodgard the cordial, and he drank several swallows of it.