I was horror-struck at the wild caress, and my will was not strong enough to repress the nervous agitation I felt throughout this scene.  I listened without reply; or rather I replied by a fixed smile and signs of comprehension; wishing not to thwart her, but to treat her as a mother does a child.  Struck at first with the change in her person, I now perceived that the woman, once so dignified in her bearing, showed in her attitude, her voice, her manners, in her looks and her ideas, the naive ignorance of a child, its artless graces, its eager movements, its careless indifference to everything that is not its own desire,—­in short all the weaknesses which commend a child to our protection.  Is it so with all dying persons?  Do they strip off social disguises till they are like children who have never put them on?  Or was it that the countess feeling herself on the borders of eternity, rejected every human feeling except love?

“You will bring me health as you used to do, Felix,” she said, “and our valley will still be my blessing.  How can I help eating what you will give me?  You are such a good nurse.  Besides, you are so rich in health and vigor that life is contagious beside you.  My friend, prove to me that I need not die—­die blighted.  They think my worst suffering is thirst.  Oh, yes, my thirst is great, dear friend.  The waters of the Indre are terrible to see; but the thirst of my heart is greater far.  I thirsted for thee,” she said in a smothered voice, taking my hands in hers, which were burning, and drawing me close that she might whisper in my ear.  “My anguish has been in not seeing thee!  Did you not bid me live?  I will live; I too will ride on horseback; I will know life, Paris, fetes, pleasures, all!”

Ah!  Natalie, that awful cry—­which time and distance render cold—­rang in the ears of the old priest and in mine; the tones of that glorious voice pictured the battles of a lifetime, the anguish of a true love lost.  The countess rose with an impatient movement like that of a child which seeks a plaything.  When the confessor saw her thus the poor man fell upon his knees and prayed with clasped hands.

“Yes, to live!” she said, making me rise and support her; “to live with realities and not with delusions.  All has been delusions in my life; I have counted them up, these lies, these impostures!  How can I die, I who have never lived?  I who have never roamed a moor to meet him!” She stopped, seemed to listen, and to smell some odor through the walls.  “Felix, the vintagers are dining, and I, I,” she said, in the voice of a child, “I, the mistress, am hungry.  It is so in love, —­they are happy, they, they!—­”

“Kyrie eleison!” said the poor abbe, who with clasped hands and eyes raised to heaven was reciting his litanies.

She flung an arm around my neck, kissed me violently, and pressed me to her, saying, “You shall not escape me now!” She gave the little nod with which in former days she used, when leaving me for an instant, to say she would return.  “We will dine together,” she said; “I will go and tell Manette.”  She turned to go, but fainted; and I laid her, dressed as she was, upon the bed.