"I trust," said Delapine, "that you will take my words of warning to heart which I gave you in the cellar, and please tell your father with my compliments not to go shooting people who have done him no harm, as the bullet sometimes has the curious habit of turning round and striking the firer instead. But you must please excuse me now as I have to prepare my lecture for to-morrow at the Sorbonne. Won't you like to come and hear it? It commences at eleven sharp. No? Well then, au revoir," he said, as he entered his room and shut the door. "He must be the very devil himself," cried Pierre. "Did you hear what he said, doctor?" "I did. I was standing behind you all the time, as I came here to tell you that the carriage is ready." "Well, how in the name of heaven could he know all this? He must have been in the cellar all the time, and yet you say he was here." "I have already told you so," said Villebois, "Do you doubt my word?" "Well, I don't know what to think." "No more do I--of you, sir!" replied Villebois, becoming nettled at his reply. The doctor and Pierre drove rapidly to the General's house, and on going to his room they found him lying on his bed groaning, and in a state of semi-consciousness. Blood had been slowly trickling down his right arm, and had formed a little pool on the ground. Ripping up his shirt with a pair of scissors, Villebois noticed that a bullet had passed through the fleshy part of his arm. It had struck the bone at an angle, and ricochetted off, missing the brachial artery by a hairsbreadth, and had passed out again near the shoulder. After first disinfecting the wound, Dr. Villebois dressed it, and fixing the arm in a splint, ordered a hospital nurse to be sent for immediately, and gave strict orders that the patient was not to be disturbed. "Is it very serious?" said Pierre. "Not very, fortunately, but the median nerve is completely divided." "How do you know that?" "For two very simple reasons. First, the probe showed me that the nerve lay right in the track of the bullet, and in the second place his arm is paralysed." "Will he ever get the use of it again?" "There is no reason why he should not, if we can manage to sew the ends of the nerve together. I have good hopes that I shall succeed in doing so, but sometimes the operation proves unsuccessful." "Well, anyhow, I shall go at once to the police and have him arrested for attempting to murder my father." "You silly boy, how can you? Delapine can bring half a dozen witnesses to prove that he was in my house when the shot was fired. Besides, he had no revolver." Pierre put on a puzzled look, and scratched his head as if to awaken his thoughts, "I don't know what to make of it." "No more do I. It is very mysterious," said Villebois. CHAPTER VI THE ANALYST Two days after the episode related in the last chapter, a fiacre might have been seen rolling along the embankment of the Seine in the direction of Notre Dame.