"One would suppose you pitiless, and yet I have seen you watch by my bedside for nights together. Had I been your brother, you could not have been more generously devoted to me."
Doctor Griffon, still occupied in doing all that was requisite and possible for Fleur-de-Marie, replied to the comte without looking at him, and with imperturbable phlegm:
"_Parbleu!_ Do you think one meets with an intermittent fever so wonderfully complicated as that you had! It was wonderful, my dear friend--astonishing! Stupor, delirium, muscular action of the tendons, syncopes,--that important fever combined the most varied symptoms. You were, indeed, affected by a partial and momentary attack of paralysis; and, if it had presented nothing else, why, your attack was ent.i.tled to all the attention in my power. You presented a magnificent study; and, truth to say, my dear friend, what I desire most in the world is to meet with such another glorious fever. But that is a piece of good fortune that never occurs twice!"
At this moment Martial descended, leaning on the arm of La Louve, who still retained over her wet clothes the plaid cloak which belonged to Calabash. Struck with the paleness of Martial, and remarking his hands covered with dried blood, the comte exclaimed, "Who is this man?"
"My husband!" replied La Louve, looking at Martial with an expression of happiness and n.o.ble pride impossible to describe.
"You have a good and intrepid wife, sir," said the comte to him. "I saw her save this unfortunate young girl with singular courage."
"Yes, sir, my wife is good and intrepid," replied Martial, with emphasis, and regarding La Louve with an air at once full of love and tenderness. "Yes, intrepid; for she has also come in time to save my life."
"Your life?" exclaimed the comte.
"Look at his hands--his poor hands!" said La Louve, wiping away the tears which softened the wild brightness of her eyes.
"Horrible!" cried the comte. "See, doctor, how his hands are hacked!"
Doctor Griffon, turning his head slightly, and looking over his shoulder at Martial"s hands, said to him, "Open and shut your hand."
Martial did so with considerable pain. The doctor shrugged his shoulders, and continued his attentions to Fleur-de-Marie, saying merely, and as if with regret:
"There"s nothing serious in those cuts,--there"s no tendon injured. In a week the subject will be able to use his hands again."
"Then, sir, my husband will not be crippled?" said La Louve, with grat.i.tude.
The doctor shook his head affirmatively.
"And La Goualeuse will recover--won"t she, sir?" inquired La Louve. "Oh, she must live, for I and my husband owe her so much!" Then turning towards Martial, "Poor dear girl! There she is, as I told you,--she who will, perhaps, be the cause of our happiness; for it was she who gave me the idea of coming and saying to you all I have said. What a chance that I should save her--and here, too!"
"She is a providence," said Martial, struck by the beauty of La Goualeuse. "What an angel"s face! Oh, she will recover, will she not, doctor?"
"I cannot say," replied the doctor. "But, in the first place, can she remain here? Will she have all necessary attention?"
"Here?" cried La Louve; "why, they commit murder here!"
"Silence--silence!" said Martial.
The comte and the doctor looked at La Louve with surprise.
"This house in the isle has a bad reputation hereabouts, and I am not astonished at it," observed the doctor, in a low tone, to M. de Saint-Remy.
"You have, then, been the victim of some violence?" observed the comte to Martial. "How did you come by those wounds?"
"They are nothing--nothing, sir. I had a quarrel--a struggle ensued, and I was wounded. But this young peasant girl cannot remain in this house,"
he added, with a gloomy air. "I cannot remain here myself--nor my wife, nor my brother, nor my sister, whom you see. We are going to leave the isle, never to return to it."
"Oh, how nice!" exclaimed the two children.
"Then what are we to do?" said the doctor, looking at Fleur-de-Marie.
"It is impossible to think of conveying the subject to Paris in her present state of prostration. But then my house is quite close at hand, my gardener"s wife and her daughter are capital nurses; and since this asphyxia by submersion interests you, my dear Saint-Remy, why, you can watch over the necessary attentions, and I will come and see her every day."
"And you a.s.sume the harsh and pitiless man," exclaimed the comte, "when, as your proposal proves, you have one of the n.o.blest hearts in the world!"
"If the subject sinks under it, as is possible, there will be an opportunity for a most interesting dissection, which will allow me to confirm once again Goodwin"s a.s.sertions."
"How horridly you talk!" cried the comte.
"For those who know how to read, the dead body is a book in which they learn to save the lives of the diseased!" replied Dr. Griffon, stoically.
"At last, then, you do good?" said M. de Saint-Remy, with bitterness; "and that is important. What consequence is the cause provided that benefit results? Poor child! The more I look at her the more she interests me."
"And well does she deserve it, I can tell you, sir," observed La Louve, with excitement, and approaching him.
"Do you know her?" inquired the comte.
"Do I know her, sir? Why, it is to her I owe the happiness of my life; and I have not done for her half what she has done for me." And La Louve looked pa.s.sionately towards her husband,--she no longer called him her man!
"And who is she?" asked M. de Saint-Remy.
"An angel, sir,--all that is good in this world. Yes; and although she is dressed as a country girl, there is no merchant"s wife, no great lady, who can discourse as well as she can, with her sweet little voice just like music. She is a n.o.ble girl, I say,--full of courage and goodness."
"By what accident did she fall into the water?"
"I do not know, sir."
"Then she is not a peasant girl?" asked the comte.
"A peasant girl,--look at her small white hands, sir!"
"True," observed M. de Saint-Remy; "what a strange mystery! But her name--her family?"
"Come along," said the doctor, breaking into the conversation; "we must convey the subject into the boat."
Half an hour after this, Fleur-de-Marie, who had not yet recovered her senses, was in the doctor"s abode, lying in a good bed, and maternally watched by M. Griffon"s gardener"s wife, to whom was added La Louve. The doctor promised M. de Saint-Remy, who was more and more interested in La Goualeuse, to return to see her again in the evening. Martial went to Paris with Francois and Amandine, La Louve being unwilling to quit Fleur-de-Marie before she had been p.r.o.nounced out of danger.
The Isle du Ravageur remained deserted. We shall presently find its sinister inhabitants at Bras-Rouge"s, where they were to be joined by the Chouette for the murder of the diamond-matcher. In the meantime we will conduct the reader to the rendezvous which Tom, Sarah"s brother, had with the horrible hag, the Schoolmaster"s accomplice.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE PORTRAIT.
Thomas Seyton, the brother of the Countess Sarah Macgregor, was walking impatiently on the boulevards near the Observatory, when he saw the Chouette arrive. The horrible beldame had on a white cap and her usual plaid shawl. The point of a stiletto, as round as a thick swan"s quill, and very sharp, having perforated a hole at the bottom of her large straw basket which she carried on her arm, the extremity of this murderous weapon, which had belonged to the Schoolmaster, might be seen projecting. Thomas Seyton did not perceive that the Chouette was armed.