“You must go to Croisic and fetch a ladder,” said Camille.
Beatrix asked in a feeble voice to be laid down, and Calyste placed her on the narrow space between the bush and its background of rock.
“I saw you, Calyste,” said Camille from above. “Whether Beatrix lives or dies, remember that this must be an accident.”
“She will hate me,” he said, with moistened eyes.
“She will adore you,” replied Camille. “But this puts an end to our excursion. We must get her back to Les Touches. Had she been killed, Calyste, what would have become of you?”
“And your mother?” Then, after a pause, she added, feebly, “and me?”
Calyste was deadly pale; he stood with his back against the granite motionless and silent. Gasselin soon returned from one of the little farms scattered through the neighborhood, bearing a ladder which he had borrowed. By this time Beatrix had recovered a little strength. The ladder being placed, she was able, by the help of Gasselin, who lowered Camille’s red shawl till she could grasp it, to reach the round top of the rock, where the Breton took her in his arms and carried her to the shore as though she were an infant.
“I should not have said no to death--but suffering!” she murmured to Felicite, in a feeble voice.
The weakness, in fact the complete prostration, of the marquise obliged Camille to have her taken to the farmhouse from which the ladder had been borrowed. Calyste, Gasselin, and Camille took off what clothes they could spare and laid them on the ladder, making a sort of litter on which they carried Beatrix. The farmers gave her a bed. Gasselin then went to the place where the carriage was awaiting them, and, taking one of the horses, rode to Croisic to obtain a doctor, telling the boatman to row to the landing-place that was nearest to the farmhouse.
Calyste, sitting on a stool, answered only by motions of the head, and rare monosyllables when spoken to; Camille’s uneasiness, roused for Beatrix, was still further excited by Calyste’s unnatural condition. When the physician arrived, and Beatrix was bled, she felt better, began to talk, and consented to embark; so that by five o’clock they reached the jetty at Guerande, whence she was carried to Les Touches. The news of the accident had already spread through that lonely and almost uninhabited region with incredible rapidity.