The waking traveller, therefore, stole a little nearer, and yet a little nearer, and a little nearer to the sleeping traveller’s bed, until he stood close beside it. Even then he could not see his face, for he had drawn the sheet over it. The regular breathing still continuing, he put his smooth white hand (such a treacherous hand it looked, as it went creeping from him!) to the sheet, and gently lifted it away.
‘Death of my soul!’ he whispered, falling back, ‘here’s Cavalletto!’
The little Italian, previously influenced in his sleep, perhaps, by the stealthy presence at his bedside, stopped in his regular breathing, and with a long deep respiration opened his eyes. At first they were not awake, though open. He lay for some seconds looking placidly at his old prison companion, and then, all at once, with a cry of surprise and alarm, sprang out of bed.
‘Hush! What’s the matter? Keep quiet! It’s I. You know me?’ cried the other, in a suppressed voice.
But John Baptist, widely staring, muttering a number of invocations and ejaculations, tremblingly backing into a corner, slipping on his trousers, and tying his coat by the two sleeves round his neck, manifested an unmistakable desire to escape by the door rather than renew the acquaintance. Seeing this, his old prison comrade fell back upon the door, and set his shoulders against it.
‘Cavalletto! Wake, boy! Rub your eyes and look at me. Not the name you used to call me—don’t use that—Lagnier, say Lagnier!’
John Baptist, staring at him with eyes opened to their utmost width, made a number of those national, backhanded shakes of the right forefinger in the air, as if he were resolved on negativing beforehand everything that the other could possibly advance during the whole term of his life.
‘Cavalletto! Give me your hand. You know Lagnier, the gentleman. Touch the hand of a gentleman!’
Submitting himself to the old tone of condescending authority, John Baptist, not at all steady on his legs as yet, advanced and put his hand in his patron’s. Monsieur Lagnier laughed; and having given it a squeeze, tossed it up and let it go.
‘Then you were—’ faltered John Baptist.
‘Not shaved? No. See here!’ cried Lagnier, giving his head a twirl; ‘as tight on as your own.’
John Baptist, with a slight shiver, looked all round the room as if to recall where he was. His patron took that opportunity of turning the key in the door, and then sat down upon his bed.
‘Look!’ he said, holding up his shoes and gaiters. ‘That’s a poor trim for a gentleman, you’ll say. No matter, you shall see how Soon I’ll mend it. Come and sit down. Take your old place!’
John Baptist, looking anything but reassured, sat down on the floor at the bedside, keeping his eyes upon his patron all the time.
‘That’s well!’ cried Lagnier. ‘Now we might be in the old infernal hole again, hey? How long have you been out?’
‘Two days after you, my master.’
‘How do you come here?’
‘I was cautioned not to stay there, and so I left the town at once, and since then I have changed about. I have been doing odds and ends at Avignon, at Pont Esprit, at Lyons; upon the Rhone, upon the Saône.’ As he spoke, he rapidly mapped the places out with his sunburnt hand upon the floor. ‘And where are you going?’