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Updated: June 1, 2025
The police authorities of the canton had waited upon the party at the inn, had been extremely majestic, and had drawn up a long proces-verbal; but it was probable that they would wink at so very gentlemanly a bit of bloodshed. Newman asked whether a message had not been sent to Valentin's family, and learned that up to a late hour on the preceding evening Valentin had opposed it.
Newman stood up, deeply impressed, not knowing what to say; his heart was beating violently. "Thank you," he said at last. "I am much obliged." But Valentin seemed not to hear him, he remained silent, and his silence continued. At last Newman went and opened the door. M. le cure reentered, bearing his sacred vessel and followed by the three gentlemen and by Valentin's servant.
Mr. de Valentin's manner to me was coldly frigid, and a general air of restraint seemed to indicate that the evening had scarcely been a cheerful one. I myself did not feel much like contributing towards a more hilarious state of affairs. We had one rubber only, and then Mrs. Van Reinberg, who as a rule hated to go to bed before midnight, announced her intention of retiring.
The old schoolmaster went away, full of keen apprehension as to Valentin's sanity. A thrill of horror ran through him; there had been something supernatural, he thought, in the scene he had passed through. He could hardly believe his own impressions, and questioned them like one awakened from a painful dream. "Now attend to me, Jonathan," said the young man to his old servant.
He stuck it into the frame of his mirror and eyed it with some complacency; it seemed an agreeable emblem of triumph, documentary evidence that his prize was gained. Stretched out in a chair, he was looking at it lovingly, when Valentin de Bellegarde was shown into the room. Valentin's glance presently followed the direction of Newman's, and he perceived his mother's invitation.
It will be seen that Newman had a logical mind when I say that he declared to himself, in perfect good faith, as a result of Valentin's dark hints, that his adversaries looked grossly wicked. "There is no mistake about it now," he said to himself as they advanced. "They're a bad lot; they have pulled off the mask."
Valentin's servant, who was allowed only in scanty measure the honor of watching with his master, had been lending a light Parisian hand in the kitchen.
"In short," Maugredie made answer, with affected solemnity, and handing the piece of skin to Raphael as he spoke, "the shriveling faculty of the skin is a fact inexplicable, and yet quite natural, which, ever since the world began, has been the despair of medicine and of pretty women." All Valentin's observation could discover no trace of a feeling for his troubles in any of the three doctors.
Newman, after dinner, went up to his room, where he sat for a long time staring at his lighted candle, and thinking that Valentin was dying down-stairs. Late, when the candle had burnt low, there came a soft rap at his door. The doctor stood there with a candlestick and a shrug. "He must amuse himself, still!" said Valentin's medical adviser.
"We are old companions in arms," said Valentin's second; "it is not the first time that one of us has helped the other to lie easily. It is a very nasty wound, and the nastiest thing about it is that Bellegarde's adversary was not shot. He put his bullet where he could. It took it into its head to walk straight into Bellegarde's left side, just below the heart."
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