"Pardieu!" said he, "if I were to knock at each of these doors question all the lodgers, spend a thousand crowns to make valets and old women speak, I might learn what I want to know. There are fifty houses; it would take me at least five nights."
As he spoke, he perceived a small and trembling light approaching.
This light advanced slowly, and irregularly, stopping occasionally, moving on again, and going first to the right, then to the left, then, for a minute, coming straight on, and again diverging.
Bussy leaned against a door, and waited. The light continued to advance, and soon he could see a black figure, which, as it advanced, took the form of a man, holding a lantern in his left hand. He appeared to Bussy to belong to the honorable fraternity of drunkards, for nothing else seemed to explain the eccentric movements of the lantern. At last he slipped over a piece of ice, and fell. Bussy was about to come forward and offer his a.s.sistance, but the man and the lantern were quickly up again, and advanced directly towards him, when he saw, to his great surprise, that the man had a bandage over his eyes. "Well!" thought he, "it is a strange thing to play at blind man"s buff with a lantern in your hand. Am I beginning to dream again? And, good heavens! he is talking to himself. If he be not drunk or mad, he is a mathematician."
This last surmise was suggested by the words that Bussy heard.
"488, 489, 490," murmured the man, "it must be near here." And then he raised his bandage, and finding himself in front of a house, examined it attentively.
"No, it is not this," he said. Then, putting back his bandage, he recommenced his walk and his calculations. "491, 492, 493, 494; I must be close." And he raised his bandage again, and, approaching the door next to that against which Bussy was standing, began again to examine.
"Hum!" said he, "it might, but all these doors are so alike."
"The same reflection I have just made," thought Bussy.
However, the mathematician now advanced to the next door, and going up to it, found himself face to face with Bussy.
"Oh!" cried he, stepping back.
"Oh!" cried Bussy.
"It is not possible."
"Yes; but it is extraordinary. You are the doctor?"
"And you the gentleman?"
"Just so."
"Mon Dieu! how strange."
"The doctor," continued Bussy, "who yesterday dressed a wound for a gentleman?"
"Yes, in the right side."
"Exactly so. You had a gentle, light, and skilful hand."
"Ah, sir, I did not expect to find you here."
"But what were you looking for?"
"The house."
"Then you do not know it?"
"How should I? They brought me here with my eyes bandaged."
"Then you really came here?"
"Either to this house or the next."
"Then I did not dream?"
"Dream?"
"I confess I feared it was all a dream."
"Ah! I fancied there was some mystery."
"A mystery which you must help me to unravel."
"Willingly."
"What is your name?"
"Monsieur, to such a question I ought, perhaps, to reply by looking fierce, and saying, "Yours, monsieur, if you please; but you have a long sword, and I only a lancet; you seem to me a gentleman, and I cannot appear so to you, for I am wet and dirty. Therefore, I reply frankly: I am called Remy-le-Haudouin."
"Very well, monsieur; I thank you. I am Louis de Clermont, Comte de Bussy."
"Bussy d"Amboise! the hero Bussy!" cried the young doctor, joyfully.
"What, monsieur, you are that famous Bussy----?"
"I am Bussy," replied he. "And now, wet and dirty as you are, will you satisfy my curiosity?"
"The fact is," said the young man, "that I shall be obliged, like Epaminondas the Theban, to stay two days at home, for I have but one doublet and trousers. But, pardon, you did me the honor to question me, I think?"
"Yes, monsieur, I asked you how you came to this house?"
"M. le Comte, this is how it happened; I lodge in the Rue Beauheillis, 502 steps from here. I am a poor surgeon, not unskilful, I hope."
"I can answer for that."
"And who has studied much, but without any patients. Seven or eight days ago, a man having received behind the a.r.s.enal a stab with a knife, I sewed up the wound, and cured him. This made for me some reputation in the neighborhood, to which I attribute the happiness of having been last night awoke by a pretty voice."
"A woman"s?"
"Yes, but, rustic as I am, I knew it to be the voice of a servant.
I know them well."
"And what did you do?"
"I rose and opened my door, but scarcely had I done so, when two little hands, not very soft, but not very hard, put a bandage over my eyes, without saying anything."
""Oh!" she said, "come, do not try to see where you are going, be discreet, here is your recompense;" and she placed in my hand a purse."
"Ah! and what did you say?"