When the colonel showed her the lump of sugar, holding it between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, she again uttered her little wild cry, and sprang toward him; then she stopped, struggling against the instinctive fear he caused her; she looked at the sugar and turned away her head alternately, precisely like a dog whose master forbids him to touch his food until he has said a letter of the alphabet which he slowly repeats.  At last the animal desire triumphed over fear.  Stephanie darted to Philippe, cautiously putting out her little brown hand to seize the prize, touched the fingers of her poor lover as she snatched the sugar, and fled away among the trees.  This dreadful scene overcame the colonel; he burst into tears and rushed into the house.

“Has love less courage than friendship?” Monsieur Fanjat said to him.  “I have some hope, Monsieur le baron.  My poor niece was in a far worse state than that in which you now find her.”

“How was that possible?” cried Philippe.

“She went naked,” replied the doctor.

The colonel made a gesture of horror and turned pale.  The doctor saw in that sudden pallor alarming symptoms; he felt the colonel’s pulse, found him in a violent fever, and half persuaded, half compelled him to go to bed.  Then he gave him a dose of opium to ensure a calm sleep.

Eight days elapsed, during which Colonel de Sucy struggled against mortal agony; tears no longer came to his eyes.  His soul, often lacerated, could not harden itself to the sight of Stephanie’s insanity; but he covenanted, so to speak, with his cruel situation, and found some assuaging of his sorrow.  He had the courage to slowly tame the countess by bringing her sweetmeats; he took such pains in choosing them, and he learned so well how to keep the little conquests he sought to make upon her instincts—­that last shred of her intellect —­that he ended by making her much Tamer than she had ever been.

Every morning he went into the park, and if, after searching for her long, he could not discover on what tree she was swaying, nor the covert in which she crouched to play with a bird, nor the roof on which she might have clambered, he would whistle the well-known air of “Partant pour la Syrie,” to which some tender memory of their love attached.  Instantly, Stephanie would run to him with the lightness of a fawn.  She was now so accustomed to see him, that he frightened her no longer.  Soon she was willing to sit upon his knee, and clasp him closely with her thin and agile arm.  In that attitude—­so dear to lovers!—­Philippe would feed her with sugarplums.  Then, having eaten those that he gave her, she would often search his pockets with gestures that had all the mechanical velocity of a monkey’s motions.  When she was very sure there was nothing more, she looked at Philippe with clear eyes, without ideas, with recognition.  Then she would play with him, trying at times to take off