Leaving Lafleur and the box where they lay, a pretty spectacle for a moralist, I stumbled through the wood back to the path, and stood there in helpless vacillation.  At the house I should find better attendance, but old Jean’s cottage was nearer.  The indolence of weakness gained the day, and I directed my steps toward the cottage, thinking now, so far as I can recollect, of none of the exciting events of the night nor even of what the future still held, but purely and wholly of the fact that in the cottage I should find a fire and a bed.  The root-instincts of the natural man—­the primeval elementary wants—­asserted their supremacy and claimed a monopoly of my mind, driving out all rival emotions, and with a mighty sigh of relief and content I pushed open the door of the cottage, staggered across to the fire and sank down on the stool by it, thanking Heaven for so much, and telling myself that soon, very soon, I should feel strong enough to make my way into the inner room and haul out Jean’s pallet and set it by the fire and stretch my weary limbs, and, if the pain of my wound allowed me, go to sleep.  Beyond that my desires did not reach, and I forgot all my fears save the one dread that I was too weak for the desired effort.  Certainly it is hard for a man to think himself a hero!

I took no note of time, but I must have sat where I was for many minutes, before I heard someone moving in the inner room.  I was very glad; of course it was Jean, and Jean, I told myself with luxurious self-congratulation, would bring the bed for me, and put something on my wound, and maybe give me a chink of some fine hot cognac that would spread life through my veins.  Thus I should be comfortable and able to sleep, and forget all the shadowy people—­they seemed but shadows half-real—­that I had been troubling my brain about:  the duke, and Marie, whose face danced for a moment before my eyes, and that dead fellow who hugged the box so ludicrously.  So I tried to call to Jean, but the trouble was too great, and, as he would be sure to come out soon, I waited; and I blinked at the smoldering wood-ashes in the fire till my eyes closed and the sleep was all but come, despite the smart of my arm and the ache in my unsupported back.

But just before I had forgotten everything the door of the inner room creaked and opened.  My side was toward it and I did not look round.  I opened my eyes and feebly waved my left hand.  Then a voice came, clear and fresh: 

“Jean, is it you?  Well, is the duke at the house?”

I must be dreaming; that was my immediate conviction, for the voice that I heard was a voice I knew well, but one not likely to be heard here, in Jean’s cottage, at four o’clock in the morning.  Decidedly I was dreaming, and as in order to dream a man must be asleep, I was pleased at the idea and nodded happily, smiling and blinking in self-congratulation.  But that pleasant minute of illusion was my last; for the voice cried in tones too full of animation, too void of dreamy vagueness, too real and actual to let me longer set them down as made of my own brain: