The doctor gave us both an observing look full of astonishment.  The words were of a nature to make him suspect an atonement.  He promised to come twice a week, left directions for the treatment with Monsieur Deslandes, and pointed out the threatening symptoms that might oblige us to send for him.  I asked the countess to let me sit up the alternate nights and then, not without difficulty, I persuaded her to go to bed on the third night.  When the house was still and the count sleeping I heard a groan from Henriette’s room.  My anxiety was so keen that I went to her.  She was kneeling before the crucifix bathed in tears.  “My God!” she cried; “if this be the cost of a murmur, I will never complain again.”

“You have left him!” she said on seeing me.

“I heard you moaning, and I was frightened.”

“Oh, I!” she said; “I am well.”

Wishing to be certain that Monsieur de Mortsauf was asleep she came down with me; by the light of the lamp we looked at him.  The count was weakened by the loss of blood and was more drowsy than asleep; his hands picked the counterpane and tried to draw it over him.

“They say the dying do that,” she whispered.  “Ah! if he were to die of this illness, that I have caused, never will I marry again, I swear it,” she said, stretching her hand over his head with a solemn gesture.

“I have done all I could to save him,” I said.

“Oh, you!” she said, “you are good; it is I who am guilty.”

She stooped to that discolored brow, wiped the perspiration from it and laid a kiss there solemnly; but I saw, not without joy, that she did it as an expiation.

“Blanche, I am thirsty,” said the count in a feeble voice.

“You see he knows me,” she said giving him to drink.

Her accent, her affectionate manner to him seemed to me to take the feelings that bound us together and immolate them to the sick man.

“Henriette,” I said, “go and rest, I entreat you.”

“No more Henriette,” she said, interrupting me with imperious haste.

“Go to bed if you would not be ill.  Your children, he himself would order you to be careful; it is a case where selfishness becomes a virtue.”

“Yes,” she said.

She went away, recommending her husband to my care by a gesture which would have seemed like approaching delirium if childlike grace had not been mingled with the supplicating forces of repentance.  But the scene was terrible, judged by the habitual state of that pure soul; it alarmed me; I feared the exaltation of her conscience.  When the doctor came again, I revealed to him the nature of my pure Henriette’s self-reproach.  This confidence, made discreetly, removed Monsieur Origet’s suspicions, and enabled him to quiet the distress of that noble soul by telling her that in any case the count had to pass through this crisis, and that as for the nut-tree, his remaining there had done more good than harm by developing the disease.