d better look in the bureau to see
if her money and jewels were safe. 'Silence, wretch!' cried Madame la
Comtesse, so that the windows rattled, and gave the person a look that
made her double up like a penknife. She does not come from Carpentras.
To make a long story short, none of us went to bed that night. Madame
took it into her head you might have gone for a little walk in the
middle of the night, and would come back. Good idea, wasn't it? But
when the morning came, she saw that the bird had really flown, and that
changed the whole affair. She took to her bed, and stayed there for
five days with the room all darkened, ate nothing, drank nothing, was
delirious, had four doctors called in each at fifty francs the visit,
beside priests and nuns, and Madame la Marquise, her mamma, got three
telegrams, one longer than the other, and arrived here the day before
yesterday, and now they are trying which can cry the most. But the
daughter has the best of it. Since she had her mamma with her, madame
seems calmer. She got up yesterday for the first time, and--not to keep
back anything from you--I have great hopes that in a fortnight or three
weeks' time we shall see her going to balls again. That will do her a
world of good.

"She had your things taken up to the box-room, so that she might not
see them any more, and Madame la Marquise has your room, but Madame la
Comtesse never sets foot in it. The artist in hair says that there is
talk of renting a new house, or even of going to Spain. I should be
very sorry to leave Madame la Comtesse, but to Spain I would not go.

"I should be glad to know from Monsieur le Docteur whether, after
madame has consoled herself a little, I may give her monsieur's
address, that his things may be forwarded. I hope you are well, and
that you will write me a line. You need not be anxious about madame,
she will soon be all right again. You were not the first, and, let us
hope, you will not have been the last.

"I salute Monsieur le Docteur, "Your very obedient servant,

"AUGUSTE.

"POSTSCRIPT.--In spite of her desperation, madame had the presence of
mind to try and persuade Anne you very probably had to fly from your
political enemies, or had even been carried off and murdered by
Prussian agents. Anne said, 'Yes; such things have happened.' The
viper! You did well to take yourself out of this."

Wilhelm was unaware that he read the letter twice or three times over
without a pause between. Wh