y agitated dreams.

The next day la Peyrade could think no more; he was a prey to fever,
the violence of which became sufficiently alarming for the physician who
attended him to take all precautions against the symptoms now appearing
of brain fever: bleeding, cupping, leeches, and ice to his head; these
were the agreeable finale to his dream of love. We must hasten to add,
however, that this violent crisis in the physical led to a perfect cure
of the mental being. The barrister came out of his illness with no other
sentiment than cold contempt for the treacherous Hungarian, a sentiment
which did not even rise to a desire for vengeance.

CHAPTER IX. GIVE AND TAKE

Once more afoot, and reckoning with his future, on which he had lost so
much ground, la Peyrade asked himself if he had not better try to renew
his relations with the Thuilliers, or whether he should be compelled
to fall back on the rich crazy woman who had bullion where others have
brains. But everything that reminded him of his disastrous campaign was
repulsive to him; besides, what safety was there in dealing with this du
Portail, a man who could use such instruments for his means of action?

Great commotions of the soul are like those storms which purify the
atmosphere; they induce reflection, they counsel good and strong
resolutions. La Peyrade, as the result of the cruel disappointment he
had just endured, examined his own soul. He asked himself what sort of
existence was this, of base and ignoble intrigue, which he had led for
the past year? Was there for him no better, no nobler use to make of the
faculties he felt within him? The bar was open to him as to others; that
was a broad, straight path which could lead him to all the satisfaction
of legitimate ambition. Like Figaro, who displayed more science and
calculation in merely getting a living than statesmen had shown in
governing Spain for a hundred years, he, la Peyrade, in order to install
and maintain himself in the Thuillier household and marry the daughter
of a clarionet and a smirched coquette, had spent more mind, more art,
and--it should also be said, because in a corrupt society it is an
element that must be reckoned--more dishonesty than was needed to
advance him in some fine career.

"Enough of such connections as Dutocq and Cerizet," he said to himself;
"enough of the nauseating atmosphere of the Minards and Phellions and
Collevilles and Barniols and all the rest of them. I'll sh