I had fallen into a disused gravel-pit, treacherously hidden by the bushes, so they told me afterwards. When I recovered from my stunned condition, my cries for help had attracted the attention of Fauchard's eldest son, who, fortunately, had been passing. I do not remember calling for help; I remember nothing distinctly till I found myself on my bed, and old Dr. Perichaud of Etiolles bending over me. Then I became keenly alive to my position, for my right thigh was broken in two places, and the doctor was setting it. When the thing was over, the doctor retired with Joubert to the next room, and there they talked. When will people learn that the sick have ears to hear with, and a sense of hearing doubly acute?

This conversation came to my ears. The speakers spoke in a muted voice, it is true, but this only made the matter worse.

"You have sent for the General, you say?"

"Oui, monsieur. A man on horseback has started to fetch him. He will be here in an hour, unless——"

"Unless?"

"Monsieur does not know. The General has an affair of honour on hand. This morning, in the Bois de Boulogne, he was to meet Baron Imhoff."

"Aha!" said Perichaud, with appreciation. He was an old army surgeon, who had tasted smoke, and seen men carved with other things than scalpels. He was also a gossip, as most old army men are. "Aha! And what was the cause of the affair? Do you know?"

"Oh, mon Dieu!" said Joubert, "it was all that cursed business at the Schloss Lichtenberg, of which everyone is speaking. Baron Imhoff was cousin"—mark the "was"—"of the Baron von Lichtenberg, Baron Imhoff picked a quarrel at the Grand Club yesterday with the General. That's all. It is a bad affair."

"And the Lichtenberg affair—the cause of all this?" said Perichaud.

"Ah, that beats the Moscow campaign," said Joubert, "for blackness and treachery. Mark you: this is between ourselves. You will never breathe a word of it to anyone?"

"No, no; not a word!"

"Well, the Baron Carl von Lichtenberg was mad."

"Mad?"

"Mad. What else can you call a man who brings his little daughter up as a boy?"

"A boy?"

"It is true. He fancied she was some old dead-and-gone Lichtenberg returned, and that she was doomed to be killed by the child in there with the broken leg, whom he thought was some old dead-and-gone Saluce returned. Then— Listen to me; and I trust monsieur's honour never to let these words go further. He, or at least one of his damned jÄgers, tried to smother the child. The night before, they tried to stab him—as he lay asleep in bed—with my couteau de chasse, and would have done it only the Blessed Virgin interposed."

"Great Heaven!" said the old doctor.

"Oh, yes," said Joubert; "that's the story. I saw it all with my own eyes, or I wouldn't believe my own tongue with my own ears. And now monsieur, what do you think of him?"

"Of him?" said Perichaud.

"Of the child. Is there danger?"

"Not a bit; but he'll be lame for life."

"Lame for life!"

"The femur is broken in two places, and splintered. The right leg will be two inches shorter than the left. All the surgeons in Paris could not do him any good."

"Then he will be useless for the army!" said Joubert. And I could hear the catching of his breath.

"He will never see service," replied Perichaud.

A loud smash of crockery came as a reply to the doctor's pronouncement. It was Joubert kicking a great Japanese jar on to the floor.

As for me, I had heard the death-sentence of my hopes. I would never wear a sword or lead a company into action. I would be a thing with a lame leg—a cripple. Fortunately, an opiate which the doctor had given me began to take effect. It did not make me sleepy, but it dulled my thoughts—some of them; others it made more bright. I lay listening to the doctor departing, and watching the red sunset which was dyeing Etiolles, and the woods, and the walls of my bedroom.

Then Joubert's words came into my head about Lichtenberg, and the duel the General had fought that morning with Baron Imhoff. I did not feel in the least uneasy about my father, and I was picturing the duel in the woods of Lichtenberg, when a sound through the open window came to my ears.

It was a carriage rapidly driving up the distant avenue to the chÂteau.

It was my father, I felt sure. A long time passed, and then I heard steps on the drawbridge; voices sounded from below. Then came a step on the stairs; my door opened, and a gentleman stood framed in the doorway.

I shall never forget my first sight of the Vicomte Armand de Chatellan, my father's cousin on the Saluces' side, and my future guardian.

I had never seen him before. He was not, indeed, a sight to come often in a child's way, this flower of the boulevards, seventy if a day, scented, exquisite, with a large impassive, evenly coloured red face, the face of a Roman consul, in which were set the blue eyes of a good-tempered child.

This great gentleman, who left the pavements of Paris only once a year for a three weeks' visit to his estates in Auvergne, had travelled express from Paris to tell a child that its father was lying dead, shot through the heart by the Baron Imhoff. And this is how he did it: He made a kindly little bow to me, and indicated Joubert to place a chair by the bedside.

"And how are we this evening?" asked he, taking my wrist as a physician might have done to feel my pulse.

I did not know who he was. I had vague suspicions that he was another doctor. Never for a moment did I dream he was the bearer of evil tidings. I said I was better—that old reply of the sick child—and he talked on various subjects: the airiness of the room, the beauty of the woods, and so forth. Then, to Joubert: "Distinctly feverish. Must not be disturbed to-night. Ah, yes, in the morning; that will be different. And no more tumbling into gravel pits," finished this astute old gentleman as he glanced back at me before leaving the room.

Then the opiate closed its lid on me, and I did not even hear the departure of the Vicomte Armand de Chatellan, my future guardian, who shuffled out of the unpleasant business of grieving my heart on the same evening that he shuffled into my life, he and his grand, queer, quaint, and sometimes despicable personality, perfumed with vervain and the cigars of the CafÉ de Paris.