But on the threshold I stopped, and stood silent and amazed. At first I thought the room was empty. Then, at a second glance, I saw the student. He was on his knees beside the bed in the alcove, from which the curtain had been partially dragged away. The curtain before the window had been torn down also, and the cold light of day, pouring in on the unsightly bareness of the room, struck a chill to my heart. A stool lay overturned by the fire, and above it a grey cat, which I had not hitherto noticed, crouched on a beam and eyed me with stealthy fierceness. Mademoiselle was not to be seen, nor was Fanchette, and Simon Fleix did not hear me. He was doing something at the bed—for my mother it seemed.
‘What is it, man?’ I cried softly, advancing on tiptoe to the bedside. ‘Where are the others?’
The student looked round and saw me. His face was pale and gloomy. His eyes burned, and yet there were tears in them, and on his cheeks. He did not speak, but the chilliness, the bareness, the emptiness of the room spoke for him, and my heart sank.
I took him by the shoulders. ‘Find your tongue, man!’ I said angrily. ‘Where are they?’
He rose from his knees and stood staring at me. ‘They are gone!’ he said stupidly.
‘Gone?’ I exclaimed. ‘Impossible! When? Whither?’
‘Half an hour ago. Whither—I do not know.’
Confounded and amazed, I glared at him between fear and rage. ‘You do not know?’ I cried. ‘They are gone, and you do not know?’
He turned suddenly on me and gripped my arm. ‘No, I do not know! I do not know!’ he cried, with a complete change of manner and in a tone of fierce excitement. ‘Only, may the fiend go with them! But I do know this. I know this, M. de Marsac, with whom they went, these friends of yours! A fop came, a dolt, a fine spark, and gave them fine words and fine speeches and a gold token, and, hey presto! they went, and forgot you!’
‘What!’ I cried, beginning to understand, and snatching fiercely at the one clue in his speech. ‘A gold token? They have been decoyed away then! There is no time to be lost. I must follow.’