d picturesque line of summits
now rounded, now forked, now pointed, ending with a huge pyramidal
mountain, its foot in the sea itself.

Madame Forestier pointed it out, saying: "This is L'Estherel."

The void beyond the dark hill tops was red, a glowing red that the eye
would not fear, and Duroy, despite himself, felt the majesty of the
close of the day. He murmured, finding no other term strong enough to
express his admiration, "It is stunning."

Forestier raised his head, and turning to his wife, said: "Let me have
some fresh air."

"Pray, be careful," was her reply. "It is late, and the sun is setting;
you will catch a fresh cold, and you know how bad that is for you."

He made a feverish and feeble movement with his right hand that was
almost meant for a blow, and murmured with a look of anger, the grin of
a dying man that showed all the thinness of his lips, the hollowness of
the cheeks, and the prominence of all the bones of the face: "I tell you
I am stifling. What does it matter to you whether I die a day sooner or
a day later, since I am done for?"

She opened the window quite wide. The air that entered surprised all
three like a caress. It was a soft, warm breeze, a breeze of spring,
already laden with the scents of the odoriferous shrubs and flowers
which sprang up along this shore. A powerful scent of turpentine and
the harsh savor of the eucalyptus could be distinguished.

Forestier drank it in with short and fevered gasps. He clutched the arm
of his chair with his nails, and said in low, hissing, and savage tones:
"Shut the window. It hurts me; I would rather die in a cellar."

His wife slowly closed the window, and then looked out in space, her
forehead against the pane. Duroy, feeling very ill at ease, would have
liked to have chatted with the invalid and reassured him. But he could
think of nothing to comfort him. At length he said: "Then you have not
got any better since you have been here?"

Forestier shrugged his shoulders with low-spirited impatience. "You see
very well I have not," he replied, and again lowered his head.

Duroy went on: "Hang it all, it is ever so much nicer here than in
Paris. We are still in the middle of winter there. It snows, it freezes,
it rains, and it is dark enough for the lamps to be lit at three in the
afternoon."

"Anything new at the paper?" asked Forestier.

"Nothing. They have taken on young Lacrin, who has left the _Voltaire_,
to do your work, but he i