But, suddenly interrupting herself, Louise exclaimed with alarm:
"Sir, sir, look at my father! what can be the matter with him?"
Morel had heard the latter part of this narration with a dull indifference, which Rodolph had accounted for by attributing it to the heavy additional misfortune which had occurred to him. After such violent and repeated shocks, his tears must have dried up, his sensibility have become lost; he had not even the strength left to feel anger, as Rodolph thought; but Rodolph was mistaken. As the flame of a candle which is nearly extinguished dies away and recovers, so Morel's reason, already much shaken, wavered for some time, throwing out now and then some small rays of intelligence, and then suddenly all was darkness.
Absolutely unconscious of what was said or passing around him, for some time the lapidary had become quite insane. Although his hand-wheel was placed on the other side of his working-table, and he had not in his hands either stones or tools, yet the occupied artisan was feigning the operations of his daily labour, and affecting to use his implements. He accompanied this pantomime with a sort of noise with his tongue against the roof of his mouth, in imitation of the noise of his lathe in its rotatory motions.
"But, sir," said Louise again, with increasing fright, "look, pray look at my father!"
Then, approaching the artisan, she said to him:
Morel gazed on his daughter with that troubled, vague, distracted, wandering look which characterises the insane, and without discontinuing his assumed labour, he replied, in a low and melancholy tone:
"I owe the notary thirteen hundred francs; it is the price of Louise's blood,—so I must work, work, work!—oh, I'll pay, I'll pay, I'll pay!"
"Can it be possible? This cannot be,—he is not mad,—no, no!" exclaimed Louise, in a heart-rending voice. "He will recover,—it is but a momentary fit of absence!"