He stood astonished on the threshold, one hand on the handle of the half-open door, with his head bent a little forward and quivering, his body wrapped in a white dressing-gown, which was straight and as destitute of folds as a winding-sheet; and he had the air of a phantom who is gazing into a tomb.
He saw the bed, and on the mattress that young man, bleeding, white with a waxen whiteness, with closed eyes and gaping mouth, and pallid lips, stripped to the waist, slashed all over with crimson wounds, motionless and brilliantly lighted up.
The grandfather trembled from head to foot as powerfully as ossified limbs can tremble, his eyes, whose corneae were yellow on account of his great age, were veiled in a sort of vitreous glitter, his whole face assumed in an instant the earthy angles of a skull, his arms fell pendent, as though a spring had broken, and his amazement was betrayed by the outspreading of the fingers of his two aged hands, which quivered all over, his knees formed an angle in front, allowing, through the opening in his dressing-gown, a view of his poor bare legs, all bristling with white hairs, and he murmured:
“Marius!”
“Sir,” said Basque, “Monsieur has just been brought back. He went to the barricade, and. …”
“He is dead!” cried the old man in a terrible voice. “Ah! The rascal!”
Then a sort of sepulchral transformation straightened up this centenarian as erect as a young man.
“Sir,” said he, “you are the doctor. Begin by telling me one thing. He is dead, is he not?”
The doctor, who was at the highest pitch of anxiety, remained silent.