r or move about, they seemed so
heavy and so firmly fixed to the bottom. A floating battery, circular
and high out of water, resembling the light-houses that are built on
shoals. A tall three-master passed near them, with all its white sails
set. It looked graceful and pretty beside these iron war monsters
squatted on the water. Forestier tried to make them out. He pointed out
the Colbert, the Suffren, the Admiral Duperre, the Redoubtable, the
Devastation, and then checking himself, added, "No I made a mistake;
that one is the Devastation."

They arrived opposite a species of large pavilion, on the front of which
was the inscription, "Art Pottery of the Golfe Juan," and the carriage,
driving up the sweep, stopped before the door. Forestier wanted to buy a
couple of vases for his study. As he felt unequal to getting out of the
carriage, specimens were brought out to him one after the other. He was
a long time in making a choice, and consulted his wife and Duroy.

"You know," he said, "it is for the cabinet at the end of the study.
Sitting in my chair, I have it before my eyes all the time. I want an
antique form, a Greek outline." He examined the specimens, had others
brought, and then turned again to the first ones. At length he made up
his mind, and having paid, insisted upon the articles being sent on at
once. "I shall be going back to Paris in a few days," he said.

They drove home, but as they skirted the bay a rush of cold air from one
of the valleys suddenly met them, and the invalid began to cough. It was
nothing at first, but it augmented and became an unbroken fit of
coughing, and then a kind of gasping hiccough.

Forestier was choking, and every time he tried to draw breath the cough
seemed to rend his chest. Nothing would soothe or check it. He had to be
borne from the carriage to his room, and Duroy, who supported his legs,
felt the jerking of his feet at each convulsion of his lungs. The warmth
of the bed did not check the attack, which lasted till midnight, when,
at length, narcotics lulled its deadly spasm. The sick man remained till
morning sitting up in his bed, with his eyes open.

The first words he uttered were to ask for the barber, for he insisted
on being shaved every morning. He got up for this operation, but had to
be helped back into bed at once, and his breathing grew so short, so
hard, and so difficult, that Madame Forestier, in alarm, had Duroy, who
had just turned in, roused up again in