Justine went for a warming-pan, turned down the bed, and helped to lay
her mistress in it; then, after some further time spent in punctiliously
rendering various services that showed how seriously Foedora respected
herself, her maid left her. The countess turned to and fro several
times, and sighed; she was ill at ease; faint, just perceptible sounds,
like sighs of impatience, escaped from her lips. She reached out a hand
to the table, and took a flask from it, from which she shook four or
five drops of some brown liquid into some milk before taking it; again
there followed some painful sighs, and the exclamation, '_Mon Dieu_!'

"The cry, and the tone in which it was uttered, wrung my heart. By
degrees she lay motionless. This frightened me; but very soon I heard
a sleeper's heavy, regular breathing. I drew the rustling silk curtains
apart, left my post, went to the foot of the bed, and gazed at her with
feelings that I cannot define. She was so enchanting as she lay like a
child, with her arm above her head; but the sweetness of the fair,
quiet visage, surrounded by the lace, only irritated me. I had not been
prepared for the torture to which I was compelled to submit.

"'_Mon Dieu_!' that scrap of a thought which I understood not, but must
even take as my sole light, had suddenly modified my opinion of Foedora.
Trite or profoundly significant, frivolous or of deep import, the words
might be construed as expressive of either pleasure or pain, of physical
or of mental suffering. Was it a prayer or a malediction, a forecast or
a memory, a fear or a regret? A whole life lay in that utterance, a life
of wealth or of penury; perhaps it contained a crime!

"The mystery that lurked beneath this fair semblance of womanhood grew
afresh; there were so many ways of explaining Foedora, that she became
inexplicable. A sort of language seemed to flow from between her lips.
I put thoughts and feelings into the accidents of her breathing, whether
weak or regular, gentle, or labored. I shared her dreams; I would
fain have divined her secrets by reading them through her slumber. I
hesitated among contradictory opinions and decisions without number.
I could not deny my heart to the woman I saw before me, with the calm,
pure beauty in her face. I resolved to make one more effort. If I told
her the story of my life, my love, my sacrifices, might I not awaken
pity in her or draw a tear from her who never wept?

"As I set all my hopes on