“To-morrow, madame,” said Godefroid, when the music ceased; “to-morrow your fate will be decided.  I bring you good news.  The celebrated Halpersohn is coming to see you at three o’clock in the afternoon.  He has promised,” added Godefroid in a low voice to Monsieur Bernard, “to tell me the exact truth.”

The old man rose, and grasping Godefroid’s hand, drew him to a corner of the room beside the fireplace.

“Ah! what a night I shall pass! a definitive decision!  My daughter cured or doomed!”

“Courage!” said Godefroid; “after tea come out with me.”

“My child, my child, don’t play any more,” said the old man; “you will bring on an attack; such a strain upon your strength must end in reaction.”

He made Auguste take away the instrument and offered a cup of tea to his daughter with the coaxing manner of a nurse quieting the petulance of a child.

“What is the doctor like?” she asked, her mind already distracted by the prospect of seeing a new person.

Vanda, like all prisoners, was full of eager curiosity.  When the physical phenomena of her malady ceased, they seemed to betake themselves to the moral nature; she conceived the strangest fancies, the most violent caprices; she insisted on seeing Rossini, and wept when her father, whom she believed to be all powerful, refused to fetch him.

Godefroid now gave her a minute account of the Jewish doctor and his study; of which she knew nothing, for Monsieur Bernard had cautioned Auguste not to tell his mother of his visits to Halpersohn, so much had he feared to rouse hopes in her mind which might not be realized.

Vanda hung upon Godefroid’s words like one fascinated; and she fell into a sort of ecstasy in her passionate desire to see this strange Polish doctor.

“Poland has produced many singular, mysterious beings,” said Monsieur Bernard.  “To-day, for instance, besides this extraordinary doctor, we have Hoene Wronski, the enlightened mathematician, the poet Mickievicz, Towianksi the mystic, and Chopin, whose talent is supernatural.  Great national convulsions always produce various species of dwarfed giants.”

“Oh! dear papa; what a man you are!  If you would only write down what we hear you say merely to amuse me you would make your reputation.  Fancy, monsieur, my dear old father invents wonderful stories when I have no novels to read; he often puts me to sleep in that way.  His voice lulls me, and he quiets my mind with his wit.  Who can ever reward him?  Auguste, my child, you ought for my sake, to kiss the print of your grandfather’s footsteps.”

The young man raised his beautiful moist eyes to his mother, and the look he gave her, full of a long-repressed compassion, was a poem.  Godefroid rose, took the lad’s hand, and pressed it.

“God has placed two angels beside you, madame,” he said.

“Yes, I know that.  And for that reason I often reproach myself for harassing them.  Come, my dear Auguste, and kiss your mother.  He is a child, monsieur, of whom all mothers might be proud; pure as gold, frank and honest, a soul without sin—­but too passionate a soul, alas! like that of his poor mother.  Perhaps God has fastened me in this bed to keep me from the follies of women—­who have too much heart,” she added, smiling.