“Come, come, my child, be calm!  If we talk music we are lost!” said the old man, smiling.

That smile, which rejuvenated his face, was evidently a perpetual deception to the sick woman.

“Yes, yes, I’ll be good,” said Vanda, with a petulant little air; “but when will you give me an accordion?”

The portable instrument then called by that name had just been invented.  It could, if desired, be placed at the edge of a bedstead, and only needed the pressure of a foot to give out the sounds of an organ.  This instrument, in its highest development, was equal to a piano; but the cost of it was three hundred francs.  Vanda, who read the newspapers and reviews, knew of the existence of the instrument, and had wished for one for the last two months.

“Yes, madame, you shall have one,” said Godefroid, after exchanging a look with the old man.  “A friend of mine who is just starting for Algiers has a fine instrument and I will borrow it of him.  Before buying, you had better try one.  It is possible that the powerful, vibrating tones may be too much for you.”

“Can I have it to-morrow?” she said, with the wilfulness of a creole.

“To-morrow?” said Monsieur Bernard, “that is soon; besides, to-morrow is Sunday.”

“Ah—­” she exclaimed, looking at Godefroid, who fancied he could see a soul hovering in the air as he admired the ubiquity of Vanda’s glances.

Until then, Godefroid had never known the power of voice and eyes when the whole of life is put into them.  The glance was no longer a glance, a look, it was a flame, or rather, a divine incandescence, a radiance, communicating life and mind,—­it was thought made visible.  The voice, with its thousand intonations, took the place of motions, gestures, attitudes.  The variations of the complexion, changing color like the famous chameleon, made the illusion, perhaps we should say the mirage, complete.  That suffering head lying on the white pillow edged with laces was a whole person in itself.

Never in his life had Godefroid seen so wonderful a sight; he could scarcely control his emotions.  Another wonder, for all was wondrous in this scene, so full of horror and yet of poesy, was that in those who saw it soul alone existed.  This atmosphere, filled with mental emotions only, had a celestial influence.  Those present felt their bodies as little as the sick woman felt hers.  They were all mind.  As Godefroid contemplated that frail fragment of woman he forgot the surrounding elegancies of the room, and fancied himself beneath the open heavens.  It was not until half an hour had passed that he came back to his sense of things about him; he then noticed a fine picture, which the invalid asked him to examine, saying it was by Gericault.

“Gericault,” she told him, “came from Rouen; his family were under certain obligations to my father, who was president of the court, and he showed his gratitude by painting that portrait of me when I was a girl of sixteen.”