We had stopped to change horses on several prior occasions, but express coaches do not linger over such necessities, and we had not had more than five minutes to stretch our legs at any of those relay stations. I had not even bothered to get down from the impériale, knowing that I would only have to climb up again and not being the most agile man in the world, but Dupin had got down every time to check on Ysolde Leonys.He reported on each occasion that she was now as rigid as a statue, almost as if she had somehow stopped time within her body, but that Chapelan has assured him that she was still very much alive. Her heart-rate was slow and she was cold, but she was in better health now than she had been before her strange metamorphosis.“Perhaps she’s saving herself for her impending revenge on her persecutor,” I suggested, in one of my more whimsical moments, when Dupin climbed back up after our penultimate stop before Alençon.“I hope so,” he said. “That is to say, I hope she’s saving herself—I’m not yet convinced that she’s seeking revenge on Oberon Breisz for the kind of sexual exploitation to which you imagine he must have subjected her.”“I don’t suppose you are,”
