re are you?" cried the count, who came towards us, bareheaded.

Ever since my return he had insisted on sharing our interviews,--either
because he wanted amusement, or feared the countess would tell me her
sorrows and complain to me, or because he was jealous of a pleasure he
did not share.

"How he follows me!" she cried, in a tone of despair. "Let us go into
the orchard, we shall escape him. We can stoop as we run by the hedge,
and he will not see us."

We made the hedge a rampart and reached the enclosure, where we were
soon at a good distance from the count in an alley of almond-trees.

"Dear Henriette," I then said to her, pressing her arm against my heart
and stopping to contemplate her in her sorrow, "you have guided me with
true knowledge along the perilous ways of the great world; let me in
return give you some advice which may help you to end this duel without
witnesses, in which you must inevitably be worsted, for you are fighting
with unequal weapons. You must not struggle any longer with a madman--"

"Hush!" she said, dashing aside the tears that rolled from her eyes.

"Listen to me, dear," I continued. "After a single hour's talk with the
count, which I force myself to endure for love of you, my thoughts are
bewildered, my head heavy; he makes me doubtful of my own intellect; the
same ideas repeated over and over again seem to burn themselves on
my brain. Well-defined monomanias are not communicated; but when the
madness consists in a distorted way of looking at everything, and when
it lurks under all discussions, then it can and does injure the minds of
those who live with it. Your patience is sublime, but will it not end in
disordering you? For your sake, for that of your children, change your
system with the count. Your adorable kindness has made him selfish; you
have treated him as a mother treats the child she spoils; but now, if
you want to live--and you do want it," I said, looking at her, "use
the control you have over him. You know what it is; he loves you and
he fears you; make him fear you more; oppose his erratic will with your
firm will. Extend your power over him, confine his madness to a moral
sphere just as we lock maniacs in a cell."

"Dear child," she said, smiling bitterly, "a woman without a heart
might do it. But I am a mother; I should make a poor jailer. Yes, I can
suffer, but I cannot make others suffer. Never!" she said, "never! not
even to obtain some great and honorable res