“I think I must be out of my head still, because I see the face of Diane. Give me something to drink.”
Old Marie gave him water which he drank as men do out of whose veins much blood has run, and who are parched with that terrible thirst. Diane, going to a wine rack where there were many long-necked bottles lying head downward, picked up one and gouged out the cork with her scissors.
Then she poured out in a tin cup some bubbling champagne.
“Is this good for him, do you think?” she asked Jean.
“In the name of God, I do not know,” replied Jean, shaking his head.
“But I know,” responded the patient in a somewhat stronger voice. “Good champagne will put life into the ribs of death.”
Diane kneeled down by François and tremblingly gave him the champagne, which he drank, smacking his lips meanwhile.
“I feel like another man,” he said, “and that other man wants another swig at the champagne.”
“And now,” said François in a much stronger voice, “I know that I am not wool-gathering, but it is really you, Diane Dorian, otherwise Skinny, because you are so obstinate, just as in the old days.”
While Diane was speaking, she noticed that Jean had sunk on a low bench from which he slipped softly to the floor, his eyes closed and his face gray. Diane ran to him, and catching his head to keep it from striking the floor, found blood upon her hand. Jean’s neck was bleeding--François was not the only wounded man.
Diane, with her lately gained experience and assisted by old Marie, turned back Jean’s collar and shirt and found there a wound almost as bad as François’. That, too, was washed and bound with strips of Diane’s white petticoat, and then Jean came to himself, and asked, as all wounded men do, for water.
“Give him some champagne,” said François, feebly, from his pallet.
This Diane did, and then, with Marie’s help, laid Jean upon her own pallet.
Then began for the two women a silent vigil that lasted more than a week. They took turns in watching and sleeping. By extreme good fortune both of their patients progressed wonderfully, the wounds healing with the first intention. At the end of the week Jean was able to walk about the inner room, while François, though unable to walk, could sit up in the one chair which the cellars possessed.