When Arsène entered the kitchen, he found the old man kneeling on the hearth, blowing on incandescent old embers, and adding small sticks to them. He had set his candle upon a bare stained table, and it revealed the misery of the little windowless room, with its slanting plastered ceiling and cracked distempered plaster walls. Moisture ran in quicksilver drops from the ceiling and down the walls, and the drops caught the light of both fire and candle so that they glittered like tiny silver balls. The room contained a wooden cupboard, leaning sideways, and filled with mugs, jugs and wooden plates, and there was a bare and broken table, and a wooden bench. On the floor, in a corner near the table, there was a straw pallet, covered with tattered quilts. The floor itself was of uneven stone, the cracks filled with moist mud and dirt.
Arsène stood in the doorway for a moment, leaning against the side, for he was weak and exhausted. He panted audibly. He still carried his sword and pistol in his hands. The old man continued to blow on the fire, as if he were alone and unaware of the stranger in the doorway. The fire now crackling to his satisfaction on its ashen stone hearth, he put upon it a deep iron vessel filled with water. Arsène, after a moment’s hesitation, laid his pistol and sword upon the table. The firelight shone on the hilt of the sword, which was of gold, elaborately twisted and set with twinkling gems. The young man hesitated, sighed, sank upon the bench, leaned his elbow on the table and dropped his head on his hand. The blood still moistened his sleeve, and a slow drip of blood from his cheek filtered its way through his white fingers.
He closed his eyes, then opened them, and stared at the old man curiously.
“You are brave,” he said, in a faint forced voice.
François Grandjean looked over his shoulder as he knelt on the hearth. His pale blue eyes had an inscrutable gleam in their depths, as if he were amused.
“Not so brave,” he said, in his quiet and composed voice. “I knew, after an instant or two, that you would not kill little Cecile even if I had betrayed you. You would not even have killed me.”
The young man stared again, then laughed abruptly. “That is a singular conclusion. Why should you have had that opinion?”
The old man rose, rubbed his hands free from ashes. “I have lived a long time, and I have known numerous men. There is no reckless murder in you.”
The young man did not speak.
“Nevertheless,” said François, “you have killed before. Perhaps several times. Is that not so?”
Still, Arsène said nothing. His eyes were dark and intent as they studied François, and more than a little hard, and coldly haughty.
“I, too,” said François, composedly, “have killed. But, like you, I kill only upon necessity, and then with regret.”
Arsène made no comment on this. Instead, he asked with curiosity: “If, then, I would not have killed the girl, or you, why did you protect me?”
François dipped a finger into the iron kettle, to test the temperature of the water. The red flames of the fire and the yellow flame of the candlelight mingled together in the dark and fetid room. François said: “I am a Breton, and my people have, for ages, been seamen. Those who love the sea have mysteries in their heart, and they are never deceived.”
Arsène contemplated these odd words, which seemed no answer to his question. But he was very tired. He closed his eyes again.
“Neither are they dupes for liars,” added François. He approached Arsène, and touched his white and silken sleeve, torn and stained with blood. “Monsieur, if you will remove your garments—”
Arsène looked without interest at his arm. “It is nothing. I was grazed by a ball.” He tried to rise, sank back on the bench. “I must go,” he said, in a dwindled voice. “They will search for me. I am a danger to you here.”
“But more than a possible danger if you leave,” said François. “They are still outside, those paid devils of Richelieu. They will catch you, and then there will be no mercy for those who hid you.” He smiled. “I would not have even the excuse of your threat, for I would be told that for the glory of the Cardinal and Our Lady I should have betrayed you at the cost of my life.”
His tone was filled with mockery and some bitterness. Arsène scrutinized that smiling Roman face, and his interest quickened.
“You find life, then, so valuable?” and his eye passed swiftly over the room.
“I find it less fearful than death,” replied François.
Arsène’s mind was drained of coherence by his recent danger and his present suffering. The old man’s face floated, disembodied, before him. He said, childishly: “It is strange to find a student of the philosophers in such a den.”
“No stranger than to find you here,” answered François, with a significant look at the gold-hilted sword with its crust of intricate jeweling.
He unfastened the gemmed studs of the shirt with gentle hands. Arsène resisted for a moment, then fatalistically resigned himself to having the shirt removed. Resistance seemed at abeyance in him. François noted how white and silken were his shoulders and chest and body, yet how strong and well-formed. The candlelight glimmered on the face of the young men. He seemed about twenty-six years of age, with excellent and well-bred features. His eyes were large and dark, but ungentle, and there were wrinkles of cynicism, shrewdness and bold hardness about them. Nevertheless, their expression was both intelligent and quick, and humorous. He had a good broad forehead with sharp black brows under his thick long hair, the color of his eyes. His nose was long and aquiline, with curved and distended nostrils, and his cheekbones were wide and flat. His mouth, large though it was, was not soft and too sensitive, though the corners seemed more used to smiling than drooping. It was the face of a grand seigneur, but not that of a decadent nobleman, for there was no weakness in it, no languor, no daintiness nor perfumed elegance. His flesh was clean and pampered, but it was not scented, and the handkerchief which he withdrew from his doublet to wipe his sweating face had no lace edges upon it, but was clean and crisp, and of the finest linen.
He winced when the strangely gentle fingers of the old man examined his wound, but he did not cry out. There was no false bravado in this restraint, but rather an indifference. Nevertheless, he watched the old man intently and with detachment.
“You are quite right,” said François. “The ball grazed, deeply, but is not in the wound. You have lost much blood. But you are young, and the young replace their blood with new, rapidly, just as they replace their dreams with reality.”
His voice had a queer note in it, touched with bitterness.
“You prefer the dreams to reality, then?” asked Arsène.
“There is no reality without dreams,” murmured François, abstractedly. He dipped a clean rag in the hot water, sponged the wound, bent over it. The young man winced again, stiffened. The wound was very deep, and bubbled with blood. François drew the edges together and held them tightly with his fingers. With his other hand he pressed firmly an area near the wound. He smiled down at Arsène with his deep blue eyes.
“I learned this in caring for the animals on my mother’s farm,” he said. “In a few moments, the blood will clot, and there will be less bleeding.”
There was silence in the kitchen. The firelight and candlelight danced together. The old man’s fingers were strong and steady. The pain lessened. Long moments passed. Arsène felt his flesh grow numb under the pressure of François’s fingers. The wound slowly ceased to drip.
“Dreams, and mysticism,” said Arsène, “should be left to priests and other liars. They are not for honest men.”
“On the contrary,” murmured François, studying the wound. “They are only for honest men. Liars and mountebanks use them only for oppression and for manipulation of the defenseless and the ignorant. Until honest men take them for their own there can be no justice in the world, no faith, no enlightenment. Without a dream, honesty, mercy, indignation and courage must remain impotent.”
He took a strip of cloth and wound it tightly above the wound. Then he washed away the blood from Arsène’s cheek with touches as gentle as a woman’s. And again, he smiled down at the young man, and his smile was a little sad. But he said: “The cut on your cheek will leave a scar, unfortunately, monsieur. However, your mistress will not find it disfiguring. To the ladies, an unscarred man seems wanting in virility.”
Arsène began to smile, but his weakness had returned. He panted again. The old man put a smaller vessel on the fire, removed a bottle from the cupboard, and a pewter cup, and set them on the table.
“In a moment, there will be good hot broth. In the meantime, drink this wine. It is not of a good vintage, or excellent bouquet, but it has strength in it.”
He poured a cupful of the acrid wine, and held it to Arsène’s lips. The young man obediently drank, made an excruciating face, choked, and pushed aside the cup.
“It is vile,” he said, frankly.
François was not offended. He held the cup again to Arsène’s mouth, and Arsène drank again, and groaned.
“I have drunk poison,” he spluttered, wiping his mouth with his kerchief.
François lifted the bottle, and regarded it with regret. “Worse, you have lessened my own ration.”
“I am sorry for that,” said Arsène, ironically. However, he felt the strong and acrid wine flowing through his body, and giving it strength again.
“The poor have need of strength, and violence,” remarked François. “Especially in these days. But they have always needed them. Strong wine for the oppressed, sweet wine for the oppressors. In the end, this will have significance.”
He pointed to the pallet. “Now, after you have had your broth, you will rest there for the night. Tomorrow, we will find some escape for you.”
“That is impossible, my good friend. I must leave immediately.”
François shook his head. “As my guest, you endanger me. But you endanger me more by leaving. You would not go far, after this night’s work. Either they would discover you, or you would drop in some gutter.”
He dipped a cup in the hot soup and gave it to Arsène. The young man found it hardly less obnoxious than the wine, but he drank it. “It is strange,” he murmured, glancing about the chamber again. “I have always espoused the cause of the wretched, but purely from an intellectual platform. I never knew you lived like this.”
François studied him piercingly, but did not answer. Then, after a moment, he said: “There is no reality, or dream, without knowledge.”
Arsène protested when he was led towards the pallet, which he regarded with open disfavor. He privately thought the gutter less undesirable than this. But François forced him down upon it, and threw the odorous rags over his legs. “Rest,” he said. “Tomorrow is another day.”
“But where will you sleep, mon ami?”
“On the hearth. I have slept in worse places.”
He laid his old emaciated body on the stones before the fire. The young man watched him from the straw pallet. His wounds no longer pained him. He was conscious of drowsiness and great weariness.
“But you have also slept in better,” he murmured.
François did not reply. He curled himself towards the fire, and closed his eyes.
Arsène closed his eyes, also. He heard the dripping and the wind of the renewed storm outside. But he could not sleep for a while. The night’s events rose up vividly before him. He did not like to kill, not from any squeamishness, but because murder was a violation of human dignity. The faces of the two men he had killed that night painted themselves on his closed eyelids. One had been young and very ardent, and full of laughter. He had been very adventurous, and Arsène doubted his passionate adherence to the Cardinal. He sighed. He had plunged his sword deeply into the youth’s side, and the youth had fallen, still faintly smiling, and had died only with a regretful moan for the ending of adventure. The older man had been fanatical, full of fierceness and hatred, and had tried to kill Arsène out of some mystical compulsion. Arsène did not regret killing him. Such men were dangerous.
Still sighing for the youth, he fell asleep, into a maze of troubled and uneasy dreams. Toward dawn, the dreams had become nightmares, filled with pain and fever.