all one."

He had looked up again, and made a sign that he had understood and that
he would call her. And when he found himself alone with Aunt Dide he
returned to his pictures quietly. This lasted for a quarter of an hour
amid the profound silence of the asylum, broken only at intervals by
some prison sound--a stealthy step, the jingling of a bunch of keys,
and occasionally a loud cry, immediately silenced. But the boy must have
been tired by the excessive heat of the day, for sleep gradually stole
over him. Soon his head, fair as a lily, drooped, and as if weighed down
by the too heavy casque of his royal locks, he let it sink gently on the
pictures and fell asleep, with his cheek resting on the gold and purple
kings. The lashes of his closed eyelids cast a shadow on his delicate
skin, with its small blue veins, through which life pulsed feebly. He
was beautiful as an angel, but with the indefinable corruption of a
whole race spread over his countenance. And Aunt Dide looked at him with
her vacant stare in which there was neither pleasure nor pain, the stare
of eternity contemplating things earthly.

At the end of a few moments, however, an expression of interest seemed
to dawn in the clear eyes. Something had just happened, a drop of blood
was forming on the edge of the left nostril of the boy. This drop fell
and another formed and followed it. It was the blood, the dew of blood,
exuding this time, without a scratch, without a bruise, which issued
and flowed of itself in the laxity of the degenerate tissues. The drops
became a slender thread which flowed over the gold of the pictures. A
little pool covered them, and made its way to a corner of the table;
then the drops began again, splashing dully one by one upon the floor.
And he still slept, with the divinely calm look of a cherub, not even
conscious of the life that was escaping from him; and the madwoman
continued to look at him, with an air of increasing interest, but
without terror, amused, rather, her attention engaged by this, as by the
flight of the big flies, which her gaze often followed for hours.

Several minutes more passed, the slender thread had grown larger, the
drops followed one another more rapidly, falling on the floor with a
monotonous and persistent drip. And Charles, at one moment, stirred,
opened his eyes, and perceived that he was covered with blood. But
he was not frightened; he was accustomed to this bloody spring, which
issued from him