Basque and the porter had carried Marius into the drawing-room, as he still lay stretched out, motionless, on the sofa upon which he had been placed on his arrival. The doctor who had been sent for had hastened thither. Aunt Gillenormand had risen.
Aunt Gillenormand went and came, in affright, wringing her hands and incapable of doing anything but saying: 'Heavens! is it possible? ' At times she added: 'Everything will be covered with blood.
' When her first horror had passed off, a certain philosophy of the situation penetrated her mind, and took form in the exclamation: 'It was bound to end in this way! ' She did not go so far as: 'I told you so! ' which is customary on this sort of occasion.
At the physician’s orders, a camp bed had been prepared beside the sofa.
The doctor examined Marius, and after having found that his pulse was still beating, that the wounded man had no very deep wound on his breast, and that the blood on the corners of his lips proceeded from his nostrils, he had him placed flat on the bed, without a pillow, with his head on the same level as his body, and even a trifle lower, and with his bust bare in order to facilitate respiration.
Mademoiselle Gillenormand, on perceiving that they were undressing Marius, withdrew. She set herself to telling her beads in her own chamber.
The trunk had not suffered any internal injury; a bullet, deadened by the pocket-book, had turned aside and made the tour of his ribs with a hideous laceration, which was of no great depth, and consequently, not dangerous.
The long, underground journey had completed the dislocation of the broken collar-bone, and the disorder there was serious. The arms had been slashed with sabre cuts. Not a single