The Wolf-Leader Chapter 18

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter eighteen of The Wolf Leader by Alexander Dumas, translated
by Alfred Allenson eighteen fifty two to nineteen twenty nine.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by
John van Stan Savannah, Georgia, Chapter eighteen, Death and Resurrection.

(00:21):
The cold morning air brought Thibau back to consciousness. He
tried to rise, but the extremity of his pain held
him bound. He was lying on his back, with no
remembrance of what had happened, Seeing only the low, gray
sky above him, he made another effort, and, turning, managed
to lift himself on his elbow. As he looked around him,
he began to recall the events of the previous night.

(00:41):
He recognized the breach in the wall, and then there
came back to him the memory of the love meeting
with the countess and the desperate duel with the count.
The ground near him was red with blood, but the
count was no longer there. No doubtless, stock who had
given him this fine blow that was nailing him to
the spot, had helped his mastor indoors Tibau. They had

(01:02):
left there to die like a dog. As far as
they cared, he had it on the tip of his
tongue to hurl after them all the maledictory wishes wherewith
one would like to assail one's cruelest enemy. But since
Tibau had been no longer Tibau, and indeed during the
remainder of the time, that he would still be the
Baron Raoul, or at least so in outward appearance, his

(01:22):
demoniacal power had been and would continue in abeyance. He
had until nine o'clock that evening. But would he live
till then? The question gave rise in Tibau to a
very uneasy state of mind. If he were to die
before that hour, which of them would die, he or
the Baron? It seemed to him as likely to be
one as the other. What, however, disturbed and angered him

(01:46):
most was his consciousness that the misfortune which had befallen
him was again owing to his own fault. He remembered
now that before he had expressed the wish to be
the Baron for four and twenty hours, he had said
some such words as these, I should laugh, Raoul, if
the Comte de mont Goubert were to take you by surprise,

(02:06):
you would not get off so easily as if he
were the bailiff Maguoire, there would be swords drawn and
blows given and received. At last, with a terrible effort
and suffering the while excruciating pain, Thibau succeeded in dragging
himself on to one knee. He could then make out
people walking along a road not far off, on their

(02:27):
way to market, and he tried to call to them,
but the blood filled his mouth and nearly choked him.
So he put his hat on the point of his
knife and signaled to them like a shipwrecked mariner. But
his strength again failing, he once more fell back unconscious.
In a little while, however, he again awoke to sensation.
He appeared to be swaying from side to side, as

(02:48):
if in a boat. He opened his eyes. The peasants,
it seemed, had seen him, and, although not knowing who
he was, had had compassion on this handsome young man,
lying covered with blood, and had concocted a sort of
and burrow out of some branches on which they were
now carrying him to Villaire Cotteret. But by the time
they reached Pissou, the wounded man felt that he could

(03:09):
no longer bear the movement, and begged them to put
him down in the first peasant's hut they came to,
and to send a doctor to him. There. The carriers
took him to the house of the village priest and
left him there. Tibau, before they parted, distributed gold among
them from Raoul's purse, accompanied by many thanks for all
their kind offices. The priest was away saying mass, but

(03:30):
on returning and finding the wounded man, he uttered loud
cries of lamentation. Had he been Raoul himself, Tibau could
not have found a better hospital. The priest had at
one time been cure of Valparfont, and while there had
been engaged to give Raoul his first schooling. Like all
country priests, he knew or thought he knew something about doctoring.
So he examined his old pupil's wound. The knife had

(03:52):
passed under the shoulder blade, through the right lung, and
out between the second and third ribs. He did not
for a moment disguise to himself the seriousness of the wound,
but he said nothing until the doctor had been to
see it. The latter arrived, and after his examination, he
turned and shook his head, are you going to bleed? Him,
asked the priest. What would be the use, asked the doctor.

(04:15):
If it had been done at once after the wound
was given, it might perhaps have helped to save him.
But it would be dangerous now to disturb the blood
in any way. Is there any chance for him, asked
the priest, who was thinking that the less there was
for the doctor to do, the more there would be
for the priest. If his wound runs the ordinary course,

(04:36):
said the doctor, lowering his voice, he will probably not
last out the day you give him up. Then, a
doctor never gives up a patient, or at least if
he does so, he still trusts to the possibility of
nature mercifully interfering on the patient's behalf. A clot may
form and stop the hemorrhage. A cough may disturb the clot,

(04:57):
and the patient bleed to death. You think, then, that
it is my duty to prepare the poor young man
for death, asked the curate. I think, answered the doctor,
shrugging his shoulders. You would do better to leave him
alone in the first place, because he is at present
in a drowsy condition and cannot hear what you say.

(05:17):
Later on, because he will be delirious and unable to
understand you, But the doctor was mistaken. The wounded man
drowsy as he was overheard this conversation more reassuring as
regards the salvation of his soul than the recovery of
his body. How many things people say in the presence
of sick persons, believing that they cannot hear, while all

(05:38):
the while they are taking in every word. In the
present case, this extra acuteness of hearing may perhaps have
been due to the fact that it was Thibau's soul
which was awake in Raoul's body. If the soul belonging
to it had been in this body, it would probably
have succumbed more entirely to the effects of the wound.
The doctor now dressed the wound in the back, but

(06:00):
left the front wound uncovered, merely directing that a piece
of linen soaked in ice water should be kept over it. Then,
having poured some drops of a sedative into a glass
of water, and telling the priest to give this to
the patient whenever he asked for a drink, the doctor departed,
saying that he would come again the following morning, but
that he much feared that he should take his journey

(06:20):
for nothing. Tibau would have liked to put in a
word of his own and to say himself what he
thought about his condition. But his spirit was as if
imprisoned in this dying body, and against his will, was
forced to submit to lying thus within its cell. But
he could still hear the priest, who not only spoke
to him, but endeavored by shaking him to arouse him

(06:42):
from his lethargy. Thibau found this very fatiguing, and it
was lucky for the priest that the wounded man just
now had no superhuman power, for he inwardly sent the
good man to the devil many times over. Before long,
it seemed to him that some sort of hot, burning
pain was being inserted under the soles of his feet,
his loins, his head. His blood began to circulate, then

(07:03):
to boil like water over a fire. His ideas became confused,
his clenched jaws opened, his tongue, which had been bound,
became loosened. Some disconnected words escaped him. Ah, he thought
to himself, this, no doubt, is what the good doctor
spoke about as delirium. And for the while at least
this was his last lucid idea his whole life, and

(07:26):
his life had really only existed since his first acquaintance
with the black Wolf. Passed before him. He saw himself
following and failing to hit the buck, saw himself tied
to the oak tree and the blows of the strap
falling on him, Saw himself and the black Wolf drawing
up their compact, saw himself trying to pass the Devil's
ring over to Agnoletta's finger. Saw himself trying to pull

(07:48):
out the red hairs which now covered a third of
his head. Then he saw himself on his way to
pay court to the pretty Madame Poulet of the Mill,
meeting Landry and getting rid of his rival, pursued by
the far arm servants and followed by his wolves. He
saw himself making the acquaintance of Madame Magloire, hunting for her,
eating his share of the game, hiding behind the curtains,

(08:09):
discovered by Matro Magloire, flouted by the Baron of Vez,
turned out by all three. Again, he saw the hollow
tree with his wolves couching around it and the owls
perched on its branches, and heard the sounds of the
approaching violins and outboy, and saw himself, looking as Agnoletta
and the happy wedding party went by. He saw himself

(08:30):
the victim of angry jealousy, endeavoring to fight against it
by the help of drink. And across his troubled brain
came the recollection of Francois of Champagne and the innkeeper.
He heard the galloping of Baron Raoul's horse, and he
felt himself knocked down and rolling in the muddy road.
Then he ceased to see himself as t Beau. In
his stead arose the figure of the handsome young rider

(08:52):
whose form he had taken for a while. Once more
he was kissing Lazette. Once more his lips were touching
the count his hand. Then he was wanting to escape,
but he found himself at a cross road where three
ways only met, and each of these was guarded by
one of his victims. The first by the specter of
a drowned man that was Marcata, the second by a

(09:14):
young man dying of fever on a hospital bed that
was Landry. The third by a wounded man dragging himself
along on one knee and trying in vain to stand
up on his mutilated leg. That was the Comte de
mont Golbert. He fancied that as all these things passed
before him, he told the history of them one by one,
and that the priest, as he listened to this strange confession,

(09:37):
looked more like a dying man, was paler and more
trembling than the man whose confession he was listening to.
That he wanted to give him absolution, but that he
Tibaut pushed him away, shaking his head, and that he
cried out in a terrible laugh, ah, I want no absolution.
I am damned, damned, the damned. And in the midst

(09:58):
of all of this hallucination, this delirious madness, the spirit
of Tibau could hear the priest's clock striking the hours,
and as they struck he counted them. Only this clock
seemed to have grown to gigantic proportions, and the face
of it was the blue vault of heaven, and the
numbers on it were flames. And the clock was called Eternity,
and the monstrous pendulum, as it swung backwards and forwards,

(10:20):
called out in turn at every beat, never forever. And
so he lay and heard the long hours of the
day pass one by one, and then at last the
clock struck nine. At half past nine, he Tibau would
have been Raoul, and Raoul would have been Tibau for
just four and twenty hours. As the last stroke of

(10:41):
the hour died away, Tibau felt the fever passing from him.
It was succeeded by a sensation of coldness, which almost
amounted to shivering. He opened his eyes, all trembling with cold,
and saw the priest at the foot of the bed,
saying the prayers for the dying, and the hands of
the actual clock pointing to a quarter past nine. His
sense had become so acute that imperceptible as was their

(11:03):
double movement, he could yet see both the larger and
smaller one slowly creeping along. They were gradually nearing the
critical hour half past nine. Although the face of the
clock was in darkness, it seemed illuminated by some inward light.
As the minute hand approached the number six, a spasm,
becoming every instant more and more violent, shook the dying man.

(11:25):
His feet were like ice, and the numbness slowly but
steadily mounted from the feet to the knees. From the
knees the thighs, from the thighs to the lower part
of the body. The sweat was running down his forehead,
but he had no strength to wipe it away, nor
even to ask to have it done. It was a
sweat of agony, which he knew every moment might be
the sweat of death. All kinds of strange shapes, which

(11:47):
had nothing of the human about them, floated before his eyes.
The light faded away, wings as of bats seemed to
lift his body and carry it into some twilight region
which was neither life nor death, but seemed a part
of both. Then the twilight itself grew darker and darker.
His eyes closed, and like a blind man stumbling in
the dark, his heavy wings seemed to flap against strange

(12:10):
and unknown things. After that he sank away into unfathomable depths,
into bottomless abysses. But still he heard the sound of
a bell. The bell rang once, and scarcely had it
ceased to vibrate. When the dying man uttered a cry,
The priest rose and went to the side of the bed.
With that cry, the Baron Raoul had breathed his last.

(12:32):
It was exactly one second after the half hour after
nine end of Chapter eighteen. Recording by John Vanstan, Savannah Georgia,