ep up his strength."

The doctor bowed, and, putting down his hat, he said:--

"In that case, I will accept your invitation, Madame."

She gave Rosalie, who seemed to have lost her head, some orders, and then
sat down, "to pretend to eat," as she said, "to keep the _doctor_
company."

The soup was brought in again, and Monsieur Chenet took two helpings.
Then there came a dish of tripe, which exhaled a smell of onions, and
which Madame Caravan made up her mind to taste.

"It is excellent," the doctor said, at which she smiled, and, turning to
her husband, she said:--

"Do take a little, my poor Alfred, only just to put something into your
stomach. Remember you have got to pass the night watching by her!"

He held out his plate, docilely, just as he would have gone to bed, if
he had been told to, obeying her in everything, without resistance and
without reflection, and, therefore, he ate; the doctor helped himself
three times, while Madame Caravan, from time to time, fished out a large
piece at the end of her fork, and swallowed it with a sort of studied
inattention.

When a salad bowl full of macaroni was brought in, the doctor said:

"By Jove! That is what I am very fond of." And this time, Madame Caravan
helped everybody. She even filled the children's saucers, which they had
scraped clean, and who, being left to themselves, had been drinking wine
without any water, and were now kicking each other under the table.

Chenet remembered that Rossini, the composer, had been very fond of that
Italian dish, and suddenly he exclaimed:--

"Why! that rhymes, and one could begin some lines like this:

_"The Maestro Rossini
Was fond of macaroni."_

Nobody listened to him, however. Madame Caravan, who had suddenly grown
thoughtful, was thinking of all the probable consequences of the event,
while her husband made bread pellets, which he put on the table-cloth,
and looked at with a fixed, idiotic stare. As he was devoured by thirst,
he was continually raising his glass full of wine to his lips, and the
consequences were that his senses, which had already been rather upset by
the shock and grief, seemed to dance about vaguely in his head, as if
they were going to vanish altogether.

Meanwhile, the doctor, who had been drinking away steadily, was getting
visibly drunk, and Madame Caravan herself felt the reaction which follows
all nervous shocks, and was agitated and excited, and although she had
been drinking not