But what a frightful service they seemed to have done me.  Dead!  Dead!  Dead!  This was the only word I could utter.  I did nothing but groan and toss about on my bed.  I wanted to get up and run to Sainte-Severe.  My poor sergeant would throw himself at my feet, or plant himself in front of the door to prevent me.  To keep me back, he would tell me various things which I did not in the least understand.  However, his manifest solicitude for me and my own feeling of exhaustion made me yield, though I could not explain his conduct.  In one of these struggles my vein opened again, and I returned to bed before Marcasse noticed it.  Gradually I sank into a deep swoon, and I was almost dead when, seeing my blue lips and purple cheeks, he took it into his head to lift up the bed-clothes, and found me lying in a pool of blood.

However, this was the most fortunate thing that could have happened to me.  For several days I remained in a state of prostration in which there was but little difference between my waking and sleeping hours.  Thanks to this, I understood nothing, and therefore did not suffer.

One morning, having managed to make me take a little nourishment, and noticing that with my strength my melancholy and anxiety were returning, Marcasse announced, with a simple, genuine delight, that Edmee was not dead, and that they did not despair of saving her.  These words fell upon me like a thunderbolt; for I was still under the impression that this frightful adventure was a delusion of my delirium.  I began to shout and to brandish my arms in a terrible manner.  Marcasse fell on his knees by my bed and implored me to be calm, and a score of times he repeated the following words, which to me were like the meaningless words one hears in dreams: 

“You did not do it on purpose; I know well enough.  No, you did not do it on purpose.  It was an accident; a gun going off in your hand by chance.”

“Come, now, what do you mean?” I exclaimed impatiently.  “What gun?  What accident?  What have I to do with it?”

“Don’t you know, then, sir, how she was hit?”

I passed my hands over my brow as if to bring back to my mind the energy of life, and as I had no clear recollection of the mysterious event which had unhinged it, I thought that I was mad, and remained silent and dismayed, fearful lest any word should escape to betray the loss of my faculties.

At last, little by little, I collected my thoughts.  I asked for some wine, as I felt weak; and no sooner had I drunk a few drops than all the scenes of the fatal day unrolled themselves before me as if by magic.  I even remembered the words that I had heard Patience utter immediately after the event.  It was as if they had been graven in that part of the memory which preserves the sound of words, even when the other part which treasures up their sense is asleep.  For one more moment I was uncertain; I wondered if my gun could have gone off in my hands just as I was