eard, and with the death-rattle in my throat; in the open
air--don't alarm yourself, the nights were warm. In the evening the
fellah-women gathered round me, while I watched the sun that tinted
their cheeks with bronze--there were some pretty ones among them, I have
painted them in water-colors from memory--they poured out their insults
upon me in guttural tones, which I unfortunately understood, as I am an
Orientalist,"--he smiled--"and in addition to those insults they threw
mud at me, a fetid mass of filth. The women were charming, although they
took part in it. These people did not like the _roumi_, the shivering
Christian. Besides, women do not like men who have fallen. They do not
like feeble creatures.--"

"Bah!--and where were the hospitals, the Sisters of Charity?"

"Are you quite sure that the Sisters of Charity are women, my dear
Marianne?--In a word, I swear that I asked only one thing, as I lay on
that devilish, poisonous dunghill, and that was, to end the matter in
the quickest possible way, that I might be no longer thought of,
when--don't know why, or, rather, I know very well--in my fever, a
certain voice reached me--whence?--from far away it commenced
humming,--I should proclaim it yours among a thousand--a ridiculously
absurd refrain that we heard together one evening at the Varietes, at
an anniversary celebration. And this Boulevard chant recurred to me
there in the heart of that desert, and transported me at a single bound
to Paris, and I saw you again and these fair locks that I now look at, I
saw them, too, casting upon your forehead the light shadow that they do
now. I heard your laugh. I actually felt that I had you beside me in one
of the stage-boxes at the theatre, listening to the now forgotten singer
humming the refrain that had so highly amused you, Guy and myself--"

It seemed to Marianne that the duke hesitated for a moment before
pronouncing Guy's name. It was an almost imperceptible hesitation,
rather felt than seen.

Rosas quickly recovered:

"On my word, you will see directly that the Boulevard lounger was hidden
under your gloomy Castilian,--that refrain took such a hold on my poor
wandering brain, such an entire possession, that I clung to it when the
fever was at its height--I hummed it again and again, and on my honor,
it banished the fever, perhaps by some homeopathic process, for at any
other time, this deuced refrain would have aroused a fever in me."

"Why?--Because it w