“The other day I tried an experiment.  I offered her my watch; she took it and looked at it for some time; then she began to scream terribly, as if the sight of that little object had suddenly awakened her memory, which was beginning to grow indistinct.  She is pitiably thin now, with hollow and glittering eyes, and she walks up and down ceaselessly, like a wild beast in its cage; I have had gratings put on the windows, boarded them up half way, and have had the seats fixed to the floor so as to prevent her from looking to see whether he is coming.

“Oh! her poor parents!  What a life they must lead!”

We had got to the top of the hill, and the doctor turned round and said to me: 

“Look at Riom from here.”

The gloomy town looked like some ancient city.  Behind it a green, wooded plain studded with towns and villages, and bathed in a soft blue haze, extended until it was lost in the distance.  Far away, on my right, there was a range of lofty mountains with round summits, or else cut off flat, as if with a sword, and the doctor began to enumerate the villages, towns and hills, and to give me the history of all of them.  But I did not listen to him; I was thinking of nothing but the madwoman, and I only saw her.  She seemed to be hovering over that vast extent of country like a mournful ghost, and I asked him abruptly: 

“What has become of the husband?”

My friend seemed rather surprised, but after a few moments’ hesitation, he replied: 

“He is living at Royat, on an allowance that they made him, and is quite happy; he leads a very fast life.”

As we were slowly going back, both of us silent and rather low-spirited, an English dogcart, drawn by a thoroughbred horse, came up behind us and passed us rapidly.  The doctor took me by the arm.

“There he is,” he said.

I saw nothing except a gray felt hat, cocked over one ear above a pair of broad shoulders, driving off in a cloud of dust.

THE PATRON

We never dreamed of such good fortune!  The son of a provincial bailiff, Jean Marin had come, as do so many others, to study law in the Quartier Latin.  In the various beer-houses that he had frequented he had made friends with several talkative students who spouted politics as they drank their beer.  He had a great admiration for them and followed them persistently from cafe to cafe, even paying for their drinks when he had the money.

He became a lawyer and pleaded causes, which he lost.  However, one morning he read in the papers that one of his former comrades of the Quartier had just been appointed deputy.

He again became his faithful hound, the friend who does the drudgery, the unpleasant tasks, for whom one sends when one has need of him and with whom one does not stand on ceremony.  But it chanced through some parliamentary incident that the deputy became a minister.  Six months later Jean Marin was appointed a state councillor.