"No, Schleifmann! I am not hungry.... Better take me home!" They started. The Galician narrated his interview. Uncle Cyprien listened in silence, his body crumpled up, his eyes dull, his face rigid. Schleifmann was still relating when they reached the pont des Saints-Pères. "And I am not telling you a quarter of it, my friend!" the Galician concluded, still in the fever of his epopee. "I am forgetting some of it!... True, I did not obtain anything!... True, I lost a pupil!... But I have told them what I thought of them!" "You may have told them what you thought of them, my friend," Cyprien remarked judiciously. "But that does not prevent my being done for, the most undone of all men!" He made a motion as if to stride out of the carriage. Schleifmann pulled him back. "Ho! Cyprien! What's the matter?" "I feel very much like chucking myself into the Seine.... It is right here, under my very nose.... It would save me a trip!" The Galician shrugged his shoulders philosophically. "Don't be foolish, Raindal!... Be serious, my dear fellow! Your brother is not your brother for nothing!... He'll pull you out of it! He will arrange this affair!" "If he arranges it as you have done, be it said without reproach, Schleifmann, I am sorry for my creditors!" Raindal retorted calmly. He said not another word until they reached the rue d'Assas. But while Schleifmann paid the driver, Cyprien felt a sudden sensation of weakness. "Schleifmann!" he called out. "I am coming!" the Galician replied. There was a dull sound. A brown sombrero rolled into the gutter. M. Raindal had sunk, bent in two, on the pavement, all his nerves relaxed, his limbs flabby--a bundle of lifeless flesh with a face of chalk-like pallor. * * * * * Near the bed where they had laid Cyprien, still inanimate, Schleifmann wrote feverishly. "Here!" he told the concierge, who was finishing putting the patient's clothes in order, "when you go to the drug-store, you will please send this telegram to M. Eusèbe Raindal, the brother of M. Raindal." "M. Eusèbe Raindal!" the concierge protested. "But he is in Paris, monsieur!... He called this morning, just after M. Cyprien had gone, and he told me to inform his brother that he would come again this afternoon." "Ah!" said Schleifmann, surprised. "Very well, then; no telegram.... Go straight to the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs! Listen, don't frighten the poor man.... Tell him that his brother is ill." "Yes, yes! Monsieur may rest assured.... I'll tell him that as he ought to be told." Nevertheless, M. Raindal was stammering with emotion when, half an hour later, he entered the room. "What? What?" he asked, forgetting to salute Schleifmann. "Cyprien is ill ... gravely?"