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With one accord, the gentlemen both dropped Doctor Lagarde's hands, and looked at each other in blank amazement. "Of course he has discovered our names somehow!" said Mr. Percy Linwood, explaining the mystery to his own perfect satisfaction in that way. Captain Bervie had not forgotten what Madame Lagarde had said to him, when he too had suspected a trick. Linwood's benefit.
Seventeen fatal outrages were committed, and yet neither the reports of the firearms nor the cries of the victims broke the peaceful slumbers of M, le Prefet and M. le Commissaire General de la Police. But if the civil authorities slept, General Lagarde, who had shortly before come to town to take command of the city in the name of the king, was awake.
"May I ask what this lady is going to do?" said the stranger. "To be of any use to you," answered Doctor Lagarde, "I must be thrown into the magnetic trance. The person who has the strongest influence over me is the person who will do it to-night." He turned to his mother. "When you like," he said. Bending over him, she took both the Doctor's hands, and looked steadily into his eyes.
"It was natural that the ruffians should break their journey there," he concluded. "They will probably be sleeping, and I don't anticipate any trouble in getting the prisoner into our hands. As for Lagarde, he is a blustering fellow, but a coward at heart." "They won't show light if they are seven to twenty," said I. "But do you really believe they have dared to capture one of our couriers?"
"You did not intrust me, my sweet friend," said he, "with the circumstance of your having formerly known the duc de Richelieu; less reserved on the subject than you were, he told me he had seen you at the house of madame Lagarde, who considered you one of her dearest friends." "Sire," replied I, "I was too much occupied with your majesty, to think of any other person in the world."
As to madame Lagarde, she was strangely surprised to see me arrive at her house; and the evident embarrassment my presence occasioned her was a sufficient revenge on my part for the many unkind things she had said and done respecting me. I would not prolong her uncomfortable situation, but studied to conduct myself with the same unaffected simplicity of former days.
Noticing Madame Lagarde, he instantly checked the flow of his satire, with the instinctive good-breeding of a gentleman. "I beg your pardon," he said; "I have a great many faults, and a habit of making bad jokes is one of them. Is the servant right, madam, in telling me that I have the honor of presenting myself here at your request?" Madame Lagarde briefly explained what had passed.
It became know the same evening that General Lagarde was still living, and that those around him hoped that the wound would not prove mortal. Dr. Delpech, who had been summoned from Montpellier, had succeeded in extracting the bullet, and though he spoke no word of hope, he did not expressly declare that the case was hopeless.
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