Adamas rose with an oath; but, by the light of the smoking torch, sputtering and dying in the blood, he saw Aristandre standing beside him. "Ah! my friend!" he cried, throwing his arms around his neck. "Mario! where is Mario?" "Saved!" said the coachman, "and I too, but not without difficulty! A glass of gin or brandy, quick! my teeth are chattering and I don't want to die, _sacrebleu_! I may still be good for something inside here!" "What a state you are in, my poor friend!" said Adamas, dragging him away to the kitchen, where Clindor gave him something to drink; "where the devil have you come from?" "_Parbleu_! from the pond," replied the coachman, who was covered with mud; "how else could I have got in? For a quarter of an hour I have been stamping about in the grass and the mud." He tore his clothes into strips and planted himself in front of the fire, saying: "Look, Adamas, and see if I am not losing too much blood, and stop it for me, old fellow, for I feel very weak!" Adamas examined him; he had something like ten wounds and as many bruises. "_Numes célestes_!" cried Adamas; "I don't see a single sound spot on your poor corpse!" "Corpse yourself!" cried the coachman, tossing off another bumper. "Do you take me for a ghost? To be sure I have come back from a long distance; but I'm better now; my hide's as thick as my horses', thank God! Don't let me bleed, that's all I ask. It's a bad thing for a man to lose all the blood in his body." Adamas washed him and dressed his wounds with marvellous skill. Thanks to the thickness of his skin and the herculean strength of his muscles, the wounded man had escaped serious injury. "And the child?" said Adamas, as he dressed him in dry clothes which Clindor had brought; "was the child in danger?" Aristandre told everything that had happened down to the time that he raised the stake of the _sarrasine_.