ed the return
of his strength, or rather the return of night. Very shortly a hundred
steps exhausted him. At length Athos refused to rise at all; he declined
all nourishment, and his terrified people, although he did not complain,
although he wore a smile upon his lips, although he continued to speak
with his sweet voice--his people went to Blois in search of the ancient
physician of the late Monsieur, and brought him to the Comte de la Fere
in such a fashion that he could see the comte without being himself
seen. For this purpose, they placed him in a closet adjoining the
chamber of the patient, and implored him not to show himself, for fear
of displeasing their master, who had not asked for a physician. The
doctor obeyed. Athos was a sort of model for the gentlemen of the
country; the Blaisois boasted of possessing this sacred relic of French
glory. Athos was a great seigneur compared with such nobles as the king
improvised by touching with his artificial scepter the parched-up trunks
of the heraldic trees of the province.

People respected Athos, we say, and they loved him. The physician could
not bear to see his people weep, to see flock round him the poor of the
canton, to whom Athos had so often given life and consolation by his
kind words and his charities. He examined, therefore, from the depths
of his hiding-place, the nature of that mysterious malady which bent
and aged more mortally every day a man but lately so full of life and a
desire to live. He remarked upon the cheeks of Athos the hectic hue of
fever, which feeds upon itself; slow fever, pitiless, born in a fold
of the heart, sheltering itself behind that rampart, growing from
the suffering it engenders, at once cause and effect of a perilous
situation. The comte spoke to nobody; he did not even talk to
himself. His thought feared noise; it approached to that degree of
over-excitement which borders upon ecstasy. Man thus absorbed, though he
does not yet belong to God, already appertains no longer to the earth.
The doctor remained for several hours studying this painful struggle of
the will against superior power; he was terrified at seeing those eyes
always fixed, ever directed on some invisible object; was terrified at
the monotonous beating of that heart from which never a sigh arose
to vary the melancholy state; for often pain becomes the hope of the
physician. Half a day passed away thus. The doctor formed his resolution
like a brave man; he issued