M. de Lescure had been two days in St. Florent, when his wife and sister arrived there on horseback, attended by Chapeau.  None of the party had ever been in the town before, but it was not long before they were recognized, and the two ladies soon found themselves standing in the inn yard.  Madame de Lescure had as yet asked no question about her husband; indeed she had not had opportunity to do so, for she had been hurried through a dense throng of people, none of whom she knew, and when she was lifted from her horse by a strange hand, she had no idea that the window immediately above her head looked from the room in which her husband lay.  Chapeau, however, with considerate tact, did not lose a moment in finding the aubergiste, and learning from him enough to enable him to whisper a word of comfort to her.

“He is here, Madame,” said he, standing close behind her, “in the room above there.  He is somewhat better than he has been, and as strong in his mind as ever.  He has been most anxious for your arrival,” and then he led the way into the hotel, pushing aside the crowd to the right and to the left; and within five minutes from the time of their entering the town, the two ladies found themselves on the stairs immediately outside the chamber in which was lying the object of all their present anxiety.

For the last four days and four nights, it had been the first and only desire of Madame de Lescure to be with her husband; and now that she was so near him she dreaded to open the door.  “Who is with him?” said she, speaking in a whisper, and trembling from head to foot, so that she could hardly stand.

“The little Chevalier is with him always,” said the aubergiste, who had followed them up the stairs:  “he never leaves him, now that M. Henri is obliged to be away.”

“Hadn’t I better go in, perhaps,” said Chapeau, “and send the Chevalier out?  I can tell M. de Lescure that Madame is here; it might be too much for Monsieur to see her all at once.”

Without waiting for an answer, Chapeau knocked at the door and went in, while the two ladies sat down on the nearest step, dreading almost to breathe in their intense anxiety; in a few seconds Arthur Mondyon came out, and taking a hand of each of his two friends, pressed them to his lips.

“He knows you are here,” said he to Madame de Lescure, “and you are to go into him alone.  Marie and I wifi go down stairs until he sends for us.  Be tranquil as you can, while you are with him; you will find him as calm as ever.”

She rose, and entered the room on tiptoe, as Chapeau left it; her face was as pale as marble, and her heart beat so violently that she felt that she would hardly be able to reach the chair at the bed-side.  De Lescure was lying on a decent but very humble bed, at the farthest end of a large room, in which there were three or four other bedsteads, and an enormous number of common deal chairs and tables piled one a-top of another.  He was propped up in the bed on pillows, and as he turned his eyes towards the door, the full light of the sun shone upon his face, and gave an especial ghastliness to its pallor.