prey upon itself; no
longer exercised on matters without, it was showing itself in more fixed
ideas; the moral being was laying hold of the physical being. He had
lately become his own doctor; he studied medical books, fancied he had
the diseases he read of, and took the most extraordinary and unheard of
precautions about his health,--precautions never the same, impossible to
foresee, and consequently impossible to satisfy. Sometimes he wanted no
noise; then, when the countess had succeeded in establishing absolute
silence, he would declare he was in a tomb, and blame her for not
finding some medium between incessant noise and the stillness of La
Trappe. Sometimes he affected a perfect indifference for all earthly
things. Then the whole household breathed freely; the children played;
family affairs went on without criticism. Suddenly he would cry out
lamentably, "They want to kill me!--My dear," he would say to his wife,
increasing the injustice of his words by the aggravating tones of his
sharp voice, "if it concerned your children you would know very well
what was the matter with them."

He dressed and re-dressed himself incessantly, watching every change
of temperature, and doing nothing without consulting the barometer.
Notwithstanding his wife's attentions, he found no food to suit him, his
stomach being, he said, impaired, and digestion so painful as to keep
him awake all night. In spite of this he ate, drank, digested, and
slept, in a manner to satisfy any doctor. His capricious will exhausted
the patience of the servants, accustomed to the beaten track of domestic
service and unable to conform to the requirements of his conflicting
orders. Sometimes he bade them keep all the windows open, declaring that
his health required a current of fresh air; a few days later the
fresh air, being too hot or too damp, as the case might be, became
intolerable; then he scolded, quarrelled with the servants, and in order
to justify himself, denied his former orders. This defect of memory, or
this bad faith, call it which you will, always carried the day against
his wife in the arguments by which she tried to pit him against himself.
Life at Clochegourde had become so intolerable that the Abbe Dominis, a
man of great learning, took refuge in the study of scientific problems,
and withdrew into the shelter of pretended abstraction. The countess had
no longer any hope of hiding the secret of these insane furies within
the circle of