"Wait still—wait—my memory returns." Then he said, with affright, "And the notary?"
"Dead."
"Dead—he! then I believe you; we can be happy; but where am I? how am I here? for how long a time, and why? I do not exactly recollect."
"You have been so sick, sir," said the doctor, "that you have been brought here, into the country; you have had a fever—very violent—delirium."
"Yes, yes I recollect; the last thing—before my illness—I was talking to my daughter, and who—who then? Oh! a very generous man, M. Rudolph, prevented my arrest. Since then I recollect nothing."
"Your disease was attended by a loss of memory," said the doctor. "The sight of your daughter, of your wife, of your friends, has restored it to you."
"And at whose house am I, then?"
"At a friend of M. Rudolph's," Germain hastened to say: "the change of air, it was thought, would be useful to you."
"Very well," whispered the doctor; and, addressing the superintendent, added, "Order the cab round to the garden door, so that he shall not be obliged to pass through the courts to go out at the main entrance."
Thus, as often happens in cases of madness, Morel had no recollection or consciousness of the alienation of mind with which he had been attacked. What remains to be told? Some moments afterward, leaning on his wife and daughter, and accompanied by a medical student, who, as a matter of precaution, was to accompany them to Paris, Morel got into the carriage, and left Bicetre, without suspecting that he had been confined there as a lunatic.