ew aside, and the two candles flickered. I remained standing
near the window, not daring to turn round, as if for fear of seeing
what was doing on behind me, and feeling the icy air continually
across my forehead, my cheeks, my hands, the deadly air which kept
streaming in. I stood there a long time.

I was not thinking, I was not reflecting. All at once a little
cough caused me to shudder frightfully from head to foot, a shudder
that I feel still to the roots of my hair. And with a frantic
movement I abruptly closed both sides of the window and, turning
round, ran over to the crib.

He was still asleep, his mouth open, quite naked. I touched his
legs; they were icy cold and I covered them up.

My heart was suddenly touched, grieved, filled with pity,
tenderness, love for this poor innocent being that I had wished to
kill. I kissed his fine, soft hair long and tenderly; then I went
and sat down before the fire.

I reflected with amazement with horror on what I had done, asking
myself whence come those tempests of the soul in which a man loses
all perspective of things, all command over himself and acts as in a
condition of mad intoxication, not knowing whither he is
going--like a vessel in a hurricane.

The child coughed again, and it gave my heart a wrench. Suppose it
should die! O God! O God! What would become of me?

I rose from my chair to go and look at him, and with a candle in my
hand I leaned over him. Seeing him breathing quietly I felt
reassured, when he coughed a third time. It gave me such a shock
tat I started backward, just as one does at sight of something
horrible, and let my candle fall.

As I stood erect after picking it up, I noticed that my temples were
bathed in perspiration, that cold sweat which is the result of
anguish of soul. And I remained until daylight bending over my son,
becoming calm when he remained quiet for some time, and filled with
atrocious pain when a weak cough came from his mouth.

He awoke with his eyes red, his throat choked, and with an air of
suffering.

When the woman came in to arrange my room I sent her at once for a
doctor. He came at the end of an hour, and said, after examining
the child:

"Did he not catch cold?"

I began to tremble like a person with palsy, and I faltered:

"No, I do not think so."

And then I said:

"What is