The next day, as soon as it was light, the colonel came down into the gardens, and looked about for Stephanie,—­he believed in the coming happiness.  Not finding her he whistled.  When his darling came to him, he took her on his arm; they walked together thus for the first time, and he led her within a group of trees, the autumn foliage of which was dropping to the breeze.  The colonel sat down.  Of her own accord Stephanie placed herself on his knee.  Philippe trembled with joy.

“Love,” he said, kissing her hands passionately, “I am Philippe.”

She looked at him with curiosity.

“Come,” he said, pressing her to him, “dost thou feel my heart?  It has beaten for thee alone.  I love thee ever.  Philippe is not dead; he is not dead, thou art on him, in his arms.  Thou art my Stephanie; I am thy Philippe.”

“Adieu,” she said, “adieu.”

The colonel quivered, for he fancied he saw his own excitement communicated to his mistress.  His heart-rending cry, drawn from him by despair, that last effort of an eternal love, of a delirious passion, was successful, the mind of his darling was awaking.

“Ah!  Stephanie!  Stephanie! we shall yet be happy.”

She gave a cry of satisfaction, and her eyes brightened with a flash of vague intelligence.

“She knows me!—­Stephanie!”

His heart swelled; his eyelids were wet with tears.  Then, suddenly, the countess showed him a bit of sugar she had found in his pocket while he was speaking to her.  He had mistaken for human thought the amount of reason required for a monkey’s trick.  Philippe dropped to the ground unconscious.  Monsieur Fanjat found the countess sitting on the colonel’s body.  She was biting her sugar, and testifying her pleasure by pretty gestures and affectations with which, had she her reason, she might have imitated her parrot or her cat.

“Ah! my friend,” said Philippe, when he came to his senses, “I die every day, every moment!  I love too well!  I could still bear all, if, in her madness, she had kept her woman’s nature.  But to see her always a savage, devoid even of modesty, to see her—­”

“You want opera madness, do you? something picturesque and pleasing,” said the doctor, bitterly.  “Your love and your devotion yield before a prejudice.  Monsieur, I have deprived myself for your sake of the sad happiness of watching over my niece; I have left to you the pleasure of playing with her; I have kept for myself the heaviest cares.  While you have slept, I have watched, I have—­ Go, monsieur, go! abandon her! leave this sad refuge.  I know how to live with that dear darling creature; I comprehend her madness, I watch her gestures, I know her secrets.  Some day you will thank me for thus sending you away.”

The colonel left the old monastery, never to return but once.  The doctor was horrified when he saw the effect he had produced upon his guest, whom he now began to love when he saw him thus.  Surely, if either of the two lovers were worthy of pity, it was Philippe; did he not bear alone the burden of their dreadful sorrow?