But I had not the right.  I sat down heavily, by the table, to think and it might have been a cry of agony sharper than the rest that reminded me once more of the tragedy of the poor lady in torture.  My eye fell upon the table, and there, as though prepared for what I was to do, lay pen and paper, ink and sand.  My hand shook as I took the quill and tried to compose a letter to my cousin.  I scarcely saw the words which I put on the sheet, and I may be forgiven for the unwisdom of that which I wrote.

“The Baron de Carondelet will send an officer for you to-night so that you may escape observation in custody.  His Excellency knew of your hiding-place, but is inclined to be lenient, will allow you to-morrow to go to the Rue Bourbon, and will without doubt permit you to leave the province.  Your mother is ill, and Madame la Vicomtesse and myself are with her.  “David.”

In the state I was it took me a long time to compose this much, and I had barely finished it when there was a knock at the outer door.  There was Andre.  He had the immobility of face which sometimes goes with the mulatto, and always with the trained servant, as he informed me that Monsieur le Medecin was not at home, but that he had left word.  There was an epidemic, Monsieur, so Andre feared.  I gave him the note and his directions, and ten minutes after he had gone I would have given much to have called him back.  How about Antoinette, alone at Les Iles?  Why had I not thought of her?  We had told her nothing that morning, Madame la Vicomtesse and I, after our conference with Nick.  For the girl had shut herself in her room, and Madame had thought it best not to disturb her at such a stage.  But would she not be alarmed when Helene failed to return that night?  Had circumstances been different, I myself would have ridden to Les Iles, but no inducement now could make me desert the post I had chosen.  After many years I dislike to recall to memory that long afternoon which I spent, helpless, in the Rue Bourbon.  Now I was on my feet, pacing restlessly the short breadth of the room, trying to shut out from my mind the horrors of which my ears gave testimony.  Again, in the intervals of quiet, I sat with my elbows on the table and my head in my hands, striving to allay the throbbing in my temples.  Pains came and went, and at times I felt like a fagot flung into the fire,—­I, who had never known a sick day.  At times my throat pained me, an odd symptom in a warm climate.  Troubled as I was in mind and body, the thought of Helene’s quiet heroism upheld me through it all.  More than once I had my hand raised to knock at the bedroom door and ask if I could help, but I dared not; at length, the sun having done its worst and spent its fury, I began to hear steps along the banquette and voices almost at my elbow beyond the little window.  At every noise I peered out, hoping for the doctor.  But he did not come.  And then, as I fell back into the fauteuil, there was borne on my consciousness a sound I had heard before.  It was the music of the fiddler, it was a tune I knew, and the voices of the children were singing the refrain:—­