"Except what?"
"Dame! only this--as she was just going to step into the diligence, she turned back and shook hands with me--Mam'selle Hortense, proud as she is, is never above shaking hands with me, I can tell you, M'sieur."
"No, no--I can well believe it. Pray, go on!"
"Well, M'sieur," she shakes hands with me, and she says, "Thank you, good Madame Bouïsse, for all your kindness to me.... Hear that, M'sieur, 'good Madame Bouïsse,'--the dear child!"
"And then--?"
"Bah! how impatient you are! Well, then, she says (after thanking me, you observe)--'I have paid you my rent, Madame Bouïsse, up to the end of the present month, and if, when the time has expired, I have neither written nor returned, consider me still as your tenant. If, however, I do not come back at all, I will let you know further respecting the care of my books and other property."
If she did not come back at all! Oh, Heaven! I had never contemplated such a possibility. I left Madame Bouïsse without another word, and going up to my own rooms, flung myself upon my bed, as if I were stupefied.
All that night, all the next day, those words haunted me. They seemed to have burned themselves into my brain in letters of fire. Dreaming, I woke up with them upon my lips; reading, they started out upon me from the page. "If I never come back at all!"
At last, when the fifth day came round--the fifth day of the third week of her absence--I became so languid and desponding that I lost all power of application.
Even Dr. Chéron noticed it, and calling me in the afternoon to his private room, said:--