“A doctor! quick! . . . he is dying,” I cried.

Louis vanished, and my poor Armand again gasped, “Mamma!  Mamma!” The next moment he lost all consciousness of his mother’s existence.  The pretty veins on his forehead swelled, and the convulsions began.  For a whole hour before the doctors came, I held in my arms that merry baby, all lilies and roses, the blossom of my life, my pride, and my joy, lifeless as a piece of wood; and his eyes!  I cannot think of them without horror.  My pretty Armand was a mere mummy—­black, shriveled, misshapen.

A doctor, two doctors, brought from Marseilles by Louis, hovered about like birds of ill omen; it made me shudder to look at them.  One spoke of brain fever, the other saw nothing but an ordinary case of convulsions in infancy.  Our own country doctor seemed to me to have the most sense, for he offered no opinion.  “It’s teething,” said the second doctor.—­“Fever,” said the first.  Finally it was agreed to put leeches on his neck and ice on his head.  It seemed to me like death.  To look on, to see a corpse, all purple or black, and not a cry, not a movement from this creature but now so full of life and sound—­it was horrible!

At one moment I lost my head, and gave a sort of hysterical laugh, as I saw the pretty neck which I used to devour with kisses, with the leeches feeding on it, and his darling head in a cap of ice.  My dear, we had to cut those lovely curls, of which we were so proud and with which you used to play, in order to make room for the ice.  The convulsions returned every ten minutes with the regularity of labor pains, and then the poor baby writhed and twisted, now white, now violet.  His supple limbs clattered like wood as they struck.  And this unconscious flesh was the being who smiled and prattled, and used to say Mamma!  At the thought, a storm of agony swept tumultuously over my soul, like the sea tossing in a hurricane.  It seemed as though every tie which binds a child to its mother’s heart was strained to rending.  My mother, who might have given me help, advice, or comfort, was in Paris.  Mothers, it is my belief, know more than doctors do about convulsions.

After four days and nights of suspense and fear, which almost killed me, the doctors were unanimous in advising the application of a horrid ointment, which would produce open sores.  Sores on my Armand! who only five days before was playing about, and laughing, and trying to say “Godmother!” I would not have it done, preferring to trust in nature.  Louis, who believes in doctors, scolded me.  A man remains the same through everything.  But there are moments when this terrible disease takes the likeness of death, and in one of these it seemed borne in upon me that this hateful remedy was the salvation of Armand.  Louise, the skin was so dry, so rough and parched, that the ointment would not act.  Then I broke into weeping, and my tears fell so long and so fast, that the bedside was wet through.  And the doctors were at dinner!