“Are there any letters?” asked Jorge.
“One for the senhora,” answered the postman.
Jorge looked at the envelope; it was directed to Luiza, and bore the French postmark.
“Who the deuce can it be from?” he thought, putting it in his pocket and going out. He returned in a carriage half an hour later with Julião; Luiza was sleeping heavily.
“She needs care; we shall see,” said Julião, shaking his head, while Jorge watched him anxiously from the other side of the bed. He wrote a prescription, and remained to breakfast. The day was cold and cloudy. Marianna, wrapped in a shawl, waited at table, her fingers swollen with chilblains. Jorge felt depressed, as if the mists of the atmosphere were gathering around his soul. What could be the cause of this fever? he asked Julião disconsolately. It was very strange. For six weeks she had been ill and well by turns.
“These fevers have a thousand different causes,” said Julião, tranquilly breaking off a piece of toast; “sometimes a draught is the cause, sometimes anxiety. I have at present in my practice a curious example,—an individual, one Alves, who was at death’s door as the result of a couple of months of constant anxiety. Two weeks ago, through a caprice of Fortune,—for that lady is, as we know, capricious,—he was able to settle his affairs, and free himself from his embarrassments. Well, ever since he has had a fever of this kind, insidious, perplexing, with contradictory symptoms. What is the cause of it? That the nervous excitement debilitates, and the sudden joy inflames the blood. A general wasting away of the system follows, until at last the implacable creditor presents himself, and—per omnia saccula.”
He rose and lighted a cigar.
“In any case let her have absolute repose,” he continued, “as if her senses were wrapped up in cotton-wool. No noise, no conversation; and if she is thirsty, lemonade. Good-by.” And he went away drawing on the black gloves which he had worn ever since he had become a member of the medical fraternity.
Jorge returned to the bedroom. Luiza was still dozing. Marianna, seated in a low chair beside the bed, an expression of sorrow on her countenance, did not remove her eyes, in which there was a vague terror, from her mistress.
“She has been very quiet,” she whispered.