Presently the countess came down, and sat close to the backgammon table, apparently for better light on her embroidery, though the anxiety which led her to place her frame was ill-concealed.  A piece of fatal ill-luck which I could not prevent changed the count’s face; from gaiety it fell to gloom, from purple it became yellow, and his eyes rolled.  Then followed worse ill-luck, which I could neither avert nor repair.  Monsieur de Mortsauf made a fatal throw which decided the game.  Instantly he sprang up, flung the table at me and the lamp on the floor, struck the chimney-piece with his fist and jumped, for I cannot say he walked, about the room.  The torrent of insults, imprecations, and incoherent words which rushed from his lips would have made an observer think of the old tales of satanic possession in the Middle Ages.  Imagine my position!

“Go into the garden,” said the countess, pressing my hand.

I left the room before the count could notice my disappearance.  On the terrace, where I slowly walked about, I heard his shouts and then his moans from the bedroom which adjoined the dining-room.  Also I heard at intervals through that tempest of sound the voice of an angel, which rose like the song of a nightingale as the rain ceases.  I walked about under the acacias in the loveliest night of the month of August, waiting for the countess to join me.  I knew she would come; her gesture promised it.  For several days an explanation seemed to float between us; a word would suffice to send it gushing from the spring, overfull, in our souls.  What timidity had thus far delayed a perfect understanding between us?  Perhaps she loved, as I did, these quiverings of the spirit which resembled emotions of fear and numbed the sensibilities while we held our life unuttered within us, hesitating to unveil its secrets with the modesty of the young girl before the husband she loves.  An hour passed.  I was sitting on the brick balustrade when the sound of her footsteps blending with the undulating ripple of her flowing gown stirred the calm air of the night.  These are sensations to which the heart suffices not.

“Monsieur de Mortsauf is sleeping,” she said.  “When he is thus I give him an infusion of poppies, a cup of water in which a few poppies have been steeped; the attacks are so infrequent that this simple remedy never loses its effect—­Monsieur,” she continued, changing her tone and using the most persuasive inflexion of her voice, “this most unfortunate accident has revealed to you a secret which has hitherto been sedulously kept; promise me to bury the recollection of that scene.  Do this for my sake, I beg of you.  I don’t ask you to swear it; give me your word of honor and I shall be content.”

“Need I give it to you?” I said.  “Do we not understand each other?”

“You must not judge unfavorably of Monsieur de Mortsauf; you see the effects of his many sufferings under the emigration,” she went on.  “To-morrow he will entirely forget all that he has said and done; you will find him kind and excellent as ever.”