At sight of the Captain stretched upon the floor there was a scream from Mother Capoulade and an oath from the soldier.
“Mon Dieu! what has happened?” she cried, hurrying forward.
“Miserable!” exclaimed La Boulaye, with well-feigned anger. “It seems that your wretched hovel is tumbling to pieces, and that men are not safe beneath its roof.” And he indicated the broken plaster and the fallen lamp.
“How did it happen, Citoyenne-deputy?” asked Guyot; for all that he drew the only possible inference from what he saw.
“Can you not see how it happened?” returned La Boulaye, impatiently. “As for you, wretched woman, you will suffer for it, I promise you. The nation is likely to demand a high price for Captain Charlot's injuries.”
“But, bon Dieu, how am I to blame?” wailed the frightened woman.
“To blame,” echoed La Boulaye, in a furious voice. “Are you not to blame that you let rooms in a crazy hovel? Let them to emigres as much as you will, but if you let them to good patriots and thereby endanger their lives you must take the consequences. And the consequences in this case are likely to be severe, malheureuse.”
He turned now to Guyot, who was kneeling by the Captain, and looking to his hurt.
“Here, Guyot,” he commanded sharply, “reconduct the Citoyenne to her coach. I will perhaps see her again later, when the Captain shall have recovered consciousness. You, Citoyenne Capoulade, assist me to carry him to bed.”
Each obeyed him, Guyot readily, as became a soldier, and the hostess trembling with the dread which La Boulaye's words had instilled into her. They got Charlot to bed, and when a half-hour or so later he recovered consciousness, it was to find Guyot watching at his bed-side. Bewildered, he demanded an explanation of his present position and of the pain in his head, which brought him the memory of a sudden and unaccountable blow he had received, which was the last thing that he remembered. Guyot, who had never for a moment entertained a doubt of the genuineness of the mise-en-scene La Boulaye had prepared, answered him with the explanation of how he had been struck by the falling lamp, whereupon Charlot fell to cursing lamps and crumblings with horrid volubility. That done he would have risen, but that La Boulaye, entering at that moment, insisted that he should remain abed.