I stammered out a few confused words.  The affection and generous ideas of this noble man had moved me profoundly, and I was conscious of a new nature, as it were, awakening within me.  But when he pronounced the name of his future son-in-law, all my savage instincts rose up again, and I felt that no principle of social loyalty would make me renounce my claim to her whom I regarded as my fairly won prize.  I grew pale; I grew red; I gasped for breath.  Luckily, we were interrupted by the Abbe Aubert (the Jansenist cure), who came to inquire how I was after my fall.  Then for the first time the chevalier heard of my accident; an incident that had escaped him amid the press of so many more serious matters.  He sent for his doctor at once, and I was overwhelmed with kind attentions, which seemed to me rather childish, but to which I submitted from a sense of gratitude.

I had not dared to ask the chevalier for any news of his daughter.  With the abbe, however, I was bolder.  He informed me that the length and uneasiness of her sleep were causing some anxiety; and the doctor, when he returned in the evening to dress my ankle, told me that she was very feverish, and that he was afraid she was going to have some serious illness.

For a few days, indeed, she was ill enough to cause anxiety.  In the terrible experience she had gone through she had displayed great energy; but the reaction was correspondingly violent.  For myself, I was also kept to my bed.  I could not take a step without feeling considerable pain, and the doctor threatened that I should be laid up for several months if I did not submit to inaction for a few days.  As I was otherwise in vigorous health, and had never been ill in my life, the change from any active habits to this sluggish captivity caused me indescribable ennui.  Only those who have lived in the depths of woods, and experienced all the hardships of a rough life, can understand the kind of horror and despair I felt on finding myself shut up for more than a week between four silk curtains.  The luxuriousness of my room, the gilding of my bed, the minute attentions of the lackeys, everything, even to the excellence of the food—­trifles which I had somewhat appreciated the first day—­became odious to me at the end of twenty-four hours.  The chevalier paid me affectionate but short visits; for he was absorbed by the illness of his darling daughter.  The abbe was all kindness.  To neither did I dare confess how wretched I felt; but when I was alone I felt inclined to roar like a caged lion; and at night I had dreams in which the moss in the woods, the curtain of forest trees, and even the gloomy battlements of Roche-Mauprat, appeared to me like an earthly paradise.  At other times, the tragic scenes that had accompanied and followed my escape were reproduced so vividly by my memory that, even when awake, I was a prey to a sort of delirium.