however, suddenly appeared by the bedside and gently stopped me.  Saint-Jean was sleeping in another arm-chair.  Every night there used to be two men watching me thus, ready to hold me down by force whenever I became violent during my delirium.  Frequently the abbe was one; sometimes the worthy Marcasse, who, before leaving Berry to go on his annual round through the neighbouring province, had returned to have a farewell hunt in the outhouses of the chateau, and who kindly offered to relieve the servants in their painful task of keeping watch over me.

As I was wholly unconscious of my illness, it was but natural that the unexpected presence of the hermit in my room should cause me considerable astonishment, and throw me into a state of great agitation.  My attacks had been so violent that evening that I had no strength left.  I abandoned myself, therefore, to my melancholy ravings, and, taking the good man’s hand, I asked him if it was really Edmee’s corpse that he had placed in the arm-chair by my bedside.

“It is Edmee’s living self,” he answered, in a low voice; “but she is still asleep, my dear monsieur, and we must not wake her.  If there is anything you would like, I am here to attend to you, and right gladly I do it.”

“My good Patience, you are deceiving me,” I said; “she is dead, and so am I, and you have come to bury us.  But you must put us in the same coffin, do you hear? for we are betrothed.  Where is her ring?  Take it off and put it on my finger; our wedding-night has come.”

He tried in vain to dispel this hallucination.  I held to my belief that Edmee was dead, and declared that I should never be quiet in my shroud until I had been given my wife’s ring.  Edmee, who had sat up with me for several nights, was so exhausted that our voices did not awaken her.  Besides, I was speaking in a whisper, like Patience, with that instinctive tendency to imitate which is met with only in children or idiots.  I persisted in my fancy, and Patience, who was afraid that it might turn into madness, went and very carefully removed a cornelian ring from one of Edmee’s fingers and put it on mine.  As soon as I felt it there, I carried it to my lips; and then with my arms crossed on my breast, in the manner of a corpse in a coffin, I fell into a deep sleep.

On the morrow when they tried to take the ring from me I resisted violently, and they abandoned the attempt.  I fell asleep again and the abbe removed it during my sleep.  But when I opened my eyes I noticed the theft, and once more began to rave.  Edmee, who was in the room, ran to me at once and pressed the ring over my finger, at the same time rebuking the abbe.  I immediately grew calm, and gazing, on her with lack-lustre eyes, said: 

“Is it not true that you are my wife in death as in life?”

“Certainly,” she replied.  “Set your mind at rest.”

“Eternity is long,” I said, “and I should like to spend it in recalling your caresses.  But I send my thoughts back in vain; they bring me no remembrance of your love.”