there he lay,
all tinge of colour gone from his countenance, and his damp, dark
hair lying about his face, and with my arm round her waist stood
watching till he opened his eyes with a start and moan of pain, and
cried, as his eye fell on me: 'Madame! Ah! Is Bellaise safe?'
Then, recollecting himself: 'Ah no! I forgot! But is he safe--the
Prince?'
I told him that the Prince and his army were saved, feeling
infinitely touched that his first word should have been of my
Philippe, whom he seemed to have forgotten; but indeed it was not so.
His next cry was: 'Oh! Madame, Madame, would that this were Freiburg!
Would that I could die as Philippe die! Oh! help me!'
Cecile threw herself forward, exclaiming, in broken words, that he
must not say so; he would not die.
'You, too,' he said, 'you, too--the best wife in the world--whom I
have misused--- Ah! that I could begin all over again!'
'You will--you will, my most dear!' she cried. 'Oh! the wound will
cure.'
And, strange mixture that he was, he moaned that he should only be a
poor maimed wretch.
Darpent now brought in a priest, fresh from giving the last
Sacrements to the two mortally-wounded men. The wife looked at him
in terror, but both he and Clement gently assured her that he was not
come for that purpose to M. la Comte, but to set his mind at rest by
giving him absolution before the dressing of the wound. Of course it
was a precaution lest he should sink under the operation; and as we
led her from the bedside, Clement bade me not let her return as yet.
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