nd and
whisper: "It is nothing, nothing. I want to weep."

His chest laboured, his eyes were injected with blood, but no tears
came. I made him smell the salts which I had with me, and when we
reached his house only the shivering remained.

With the help of his servant I put him to bed, lit a big fire in
his room, and hurried off to my doctor, to whom I told all that had
happened. He hastened with me.

Armand was flushed and delirious; he stammered out disconnected words,
in which only the name of Marguerite could be distinctly heard.

"Well?" I said to the doctor when he had examined the patient.

"Well, he has neither more nor less than brain fever, and very lucky it
is for him, for I firmly believe (God forgive me!) that he would have
gone out of his mind. Fortunately, the physical malady will kill the
mental one, and in a month's time he will be free from the one and
perhaps from the other."

Chapter 7

Illnesses like Armand's have one fortunate thing about them: they either
kill outright or are very soon overcome. A fortnight after the events
which I have just related Armand was convalescent, and we had already
become great friends. During the whole course of his illness I had
hardly left his side.

Spring was profuse in its flowers, its leaves, its birds, its songs; and
my friend's window opened gaily upon his garden, from which a reviving
breath of health seemed to come to him. The doctor had allowed him to
get up, and we often sat talking at the open window, at the hour when
the sun is at its height, from twelve to two. I was careful not to refer
to Marguerite, fearing lest the name should awaken sad recollections
hidden under the apparent calm of the invalid; but Armand, on the
contrary, seemed to delight in speaking of her, not as formerly, with
tears in his eyes, but with a sweet smile which reassured me as to the
state of his mind.

I had noticed that ever since his last visit to the cemetery, and the
sight which had brought on so violent a crisis, sorrow seemed to have
been overcome by sickness, and Marguerite's death no longer appeared to
him under its former aspect. A kind of consolation had sprung from the
certainty of which he was now fully persuaded, and in order to banish
the sombre picture which often presented itself to him, he returned
upon the happy recollections of his liaison with Marguerite, and seemed
resolved to think of nothing else.

The body was too much weakened by the at