“What laceration might he have?”

“A laceration of the liver, for instance.”

“That would be very dangerous?”

“Yes—­but I should be surprised to find any complication now.  Let us go to him.  It will do him good, for he awaits you with great impatience.”

On entering the room she saw first a pale face on a white pillow.  Some candles and the firelight illumined it, defined the profile, deepened the shadows; and in that pale face the Countess saw two eyes that watched her coming.

All her courage, energy, and resolution fell, so much did those hollow and altered features resemble those of a dying man.  He, whom she had seen only a little while ago, had become this thing, this specter!  “Oh, my God!” she murmured between her teeth, and she approached him, palpitating with horror.

He tried to smile, to reassure her, and the grimace of that attempt was frightful.

When she was beside the bed, she put both hands gently on one of Olivier’s, which lay along his body, and stammered:  “Oh, my poor friend!”

“It is nothing,” said he, in a low tone, without moving his head.

She now looked at him closely, frightened at the change in him.  He was so pale that he seemed no longer to have a drop of blood under his skin.  His hollow cheeks seemed to have been sucked in from the interior of his face, and his eyes were sunken as if drawn by a string from within.

He saw the terror of his friend, and sighed:  “Here I am in a fine state!”

“How did it happen?” she asked, looking at him with fixed gaze.

He was making a great effort to speak, and his whole face twitched with pain.

“I was not looking about me—­I was thinking of something else—­something very different—­oh, yes!—­and an omnibus knocked me down and ran over my abdomen.”

As she listened she saw the accident, and shaking with terror, she asked:  “Did you bleed?”

“No.  I am only a little bruised—­a little crushed.”

“Where did it happen?” she inquired.

“I do not know exactly,” he answered in a very low voice; “it was far away from here.”

The physician rolled up an armchair, and the Countess sank into it.  The Count remained standing at the foot of the bed, repeating between his teeth:  “Oh, my poor friend! my poor friend!  What a frightful misfortune!”

And he was indeed deeply grieved, for he loved Olivier very much.

“But where did it happen?” the Countess repeated.

“I know hardly anything about it myself, or rather I do not understand it at all,” the physician replied.  “It was at the Gobelins, almost outside of Paris!  At least, the cabman that brought him home declared to me that he took him in at a pharmacy of that quarter, to which someone had carried him, at nine o’clock in the evening!” Then, leaning toward Olivier, he asked:  “Did the accident really happen near the Gobelins?”