who watched over them.

This unknown protector could not be the prince in whose quarters the two
young men resided, for the prince had not only never once paid them a
visit, but he had not even sent to make any inquiry after them.

A vague hope whispered to each heart that this unknown protector was the
woman he loved.

So the two wounded men awaited with intense impatience the moment when
they could go out. La Mole, stronger and sooner cured than Coconnas,
might have done so long before, but a kind of tacit convention bound him
to his friend. It was agreed between them that the first time they went
out they should make three calls:

The first should be upon the unknown doctor whose suave medicine had
brought such a remarkable improvement in the inflammation of Coconnas's
lungs.

The second to the dwelling of the defunct Maitre La Huriere, where each
of them had left his portmanteau and horse.

The third to the Florentine Rene, who, uniting to his title of perfumer
that of magician, not only sold cosmetics and poisons, but also
concocted philters and delivered oracles.

At length, after two months passed in convalescence and confinement, the
long-looked-for day arrived.

We used the word "confinement;" the use of it is accurate because
several times in their impatience they had tried to hasten that day; but
each time a sentinel posted at the door had stopped their passage and
they had learned that they could not step out unless Maitre Ambroise
Pare gave them their _exeat_.

Now, one day that clever surgeon, having come to the conclusion that the
two invalids were, if not completely cured, at least on the road to
complete recovery, gave them this _exeat_, and about two o'clock in the
afternoon on a fine day in autumn, such as Paris sometimes offers to her
astonished population, who have already laid up a store of resignation
for the winter, the two friends, arm in arm, set foot outside the
Louvre.

La Mole, finding to his great satisfaction, on an armchair, the famous
cherry-colored mantle which he had folded so carefully before the duel,
undertook to be Coconnas's guide, and Coconnas allowed himself to be
guided without resistance or reflection. He knew that his friend was
taking him to the unknown doctor's whose potion (not patented) had cured
him in a single night, when all of Master Ambroise Pare's drugs were
slowly killing him. He had divided the money in his purse into two
parts, and intended a hundred