When little Jacques fell ill, and Madame fretted incessantly about his loss of vigor and vivacity, Monsieur, with fatherly kindness, undertook, in the midst of his pressing business, to give the child his medicine, which had to be most carefully prepared.  Sometimes the powders were disguised in bonbons, the more agreeably to dose the patient little fellow; these were prepared with Monsieur’s own fatherly hands, and during his absence were once in a while left for Madame to administer.  Madame had great faith in these medicines,—­great faith in her husband’s skill; but the child’s disease was obstinate, very; no progress could be discovered.  It was a comforting thought, at least, that, if his recovery was beyond possibility, something had been done to soothe his pain and quiet the vexed spirit in its bitter struggle with dissolution.  Yes, the medicines were certainly very quieting,—­so quieting, so death-like in their influence,—­she could not tell how a suspicion (perhaps the strange expression of the child’s eye, when they were administered) glided into her imagination (having so great a reverence for her husband, it took no place in her mind for an instant,—­it was merely a spectral, haunting shadow) that these things were getting the child no better,—­that they were not medicine for keeping him here, but for helping him away.  This suspicion, breathing its baleful breath across her mind, weak, vacillating, incapable of energetic action, had rendered her miserable, morose, irritable, more so than ever before.  Yet little Jacques in his last hour hankered for the medicine, and craved feverishly the delicate powder, the sweet confection, his father prepared for him.

While inwardly brooding over this unnamed terror, and cowering before this shapeless thought which loomed in the darkness of her mental gloom, an idea entered her mind that I, too, was suspicious that something was going wrong,—­that I was watching,—­waiting the evil to come.  The child died.  Her fear for him was utterly superseded by fear for her husband.  What if I should find him out and betray him?  The anxiety occasioned by this possibility made her hate me.  The agony of her little one’s departure, the fear of some dire discovery, the consciousness of guilt near enough of vicinage almost to seem her own, combined to nearly distract her mind, and it seemed like a joyful relief when I departed.  The sudden release from that constant pressure of fear (she knew I could do nothing against them without money, credit, or friends) made her ill for a time, quite ill, she said.  She knew not what was done for her during this sickness,—­who nursed her, or who gave her medicine.  But one morning, on waking from what seemed a long sleep, in which she had dreamed strangely and talked wildly, she beheld Monsieur, smiling kindly, standing beside her bed with a vial and a spoon in his hand.

“It is a cordial, my dear, which will strengthen and bring you round again very soon.  You need a sedative,—­something to allay fever and excitement.”