The Chevalier knelt, not because he was in sympathy with Chaumonot's
Latin, but because he desired not to be conspicuous. God was not in
his heart save in a shadowy way; rather an infinite weariness, a sense
of drifting blindly, a knowledge of a vague and futile grasping at the
end of things. And winding in and out of all he heard was that
mysterious voice asking: "Whither bound?" Aye, whither bound, indeed!
Visions of golden days flitted across his mind's eye, snatches of his
youth; the pomp and glory of court as he first saw it; the gallant
epoch of the Fronde; the warm sunshine of forgotten summers; and the
woman he loved! . . . The Chevalier was conscious of a pain of
stupendous weight bearing down upon his eyes. Waves of dizziness,
accompanied by flashes of fire, passed to and fro through his aching
head. His tongue was thick and his lips were cracked with fever. It
seemed but a moment gone that he had been shaking with the cold. He
found himself fighting what he supposed to be an attack of seasickness,
but this was not the malady which was seizing him in its pitiless grasp.
Chaumonot's voice rose and fell.
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