He was lifted up and placed on the little armchair of white wood. He heard the terrible man saying to the porter,
“He has had an epileptic fit apparently, and this is the finishing touch.”
When Julien was able to open his eyes, the man with the red face was going on with his writing. The porter had disappeared. “I must have courage,” said our hero to himself, “and above all, hide what I feel.” He felt violently sick. “If anything happens to me, God knows what they will think of me.”
Finally the man stopped writing and looked sideways at Julien.
“Are you in a fit state to answer me?”
“Yes, sir,” said Julien in an enfeebled voice.
“Ah, that’s fortunate.”
The man in black had half got up, and was looking impatiently for a letter in the drawer of his pinewood table, which opened with a grind. He found it, sat down slowly, and looking again at Julien in a manner calculated to suck out of him the little life which he still possessed, said,
“You have been recommended to me by M. Chélan. He was the best curé in the diocese; he was an upright man if there ever was one, and my friend for thirty years.”
“Oh. It’s to M. Pirard then that I have the honour of speaking?” said Julien in a dying voice.