s
already asked for you two or three times, sir. Will you please step up
to his room, sir?"

He went upstairs. Forestier appeared to be dozing in his armchair. His
wife was reading, stretched out on the sofa.

The invalid raised his head, and Duroy said, "Well, how do you feel? You
seem quite fresh this morning."

"Yes, I am better, I have recovered some of my strength. Get through

your lunch with Madeleine as soon as you can, for we are going out for
a drive."

As soon as she was alone with Duroy, the young wife said to him, "There,
to-day he thinks he is all right again. He has been making plans all the
morning. We are going to the Golfe Juan now to buy some pottery for our
rooms in Paris. He is determined to go out, but I am horribly afraid of
some mishap. He cannot bear the shaking of the drive."

When the landau arrived, Forestier came down stairs a step at a time,
supported by his servant. But as soon as he caught sight of the
carriage, he ordered the hood to be taken off. His wife opposed this,
saying, "You will catch cold. It is madness."

He persisted, repeating, "Oh, I am much better. I feel it."

They passed at first along some of those shady roads, bordered by
gardens, which cause Cannes to resemble a kind of English Park, and then
reached the highway to Antibes, running along the seashore. Forestier
acted as guide. He had already pointed out the villa of the Court de
Paris, and now indicated others. He was lively, with the forced and
feeble gayety of a doomed man. He lifted his finger, no longer having
strength to stretch out his arm, and said, "There is the Ile Sainte
Marguerite, and the chateau from which Bazaine escaped. How they did
humbug us over that matter!"

Then regimental recollections recurred to him, and he mentioned various
officers whose names recalled incidents to them. But all at once, the
road making a turn, they caught sight of the whole of the Golfe Juan,
with the white village in the curve of the bay, and the point of Antibes
at the further side of it. Forestier, suddenly seized upon by childish
glee, exclaimed, "Ah! the squadron, you will see the squadron."

Indeed they could perceive, in the middle of the broad bay, half-a-dozen
large ships resembling rocks covered with leafless trees. They were
huge, strange, mis-shapen, with excrescences, turrets, rams, burying
themselves in the water as though to take root beneath the waves. One
could scarcely imagine how they could sti