After months of the greatest anxiety on my part, lest in his ravings he should betray himself, he was happily restored to reason.
The doctor said it happened through his seeing me.
He knew me as I sat in the room with him. His keepers said he had raved always of “Cécile, Cécile!” What of it? It led to no suspicion of his identity with Marc Debois. Are there not hundreds of Céciles?
The wretched man’s memory was a blank. As I had done him a most terrible injury, I tried to repair—in some slight degree—to atone.
He was lodged with me in my dear mother’s cottage. I used to lead him about like a child. I took him every day to the sea to see the shipping. This by degrees brought back his memory of his profession.
At last all came back, save the scene in the defile. He told me he had also been on a desolate island. Whether the same as mine, or an adjacent desert, I shall never know. A ship took him off, too, and landed him at Marseilles. He tramped it to Bénévent, and arrived there in time to see Cécile just married to M. André.
No wonder that his mind gave way.
He implored my forgiveness.
I implored his.
He was silent, sullen. No one knew his name. I explained that he was an old shipmate. This hardly satisfied the people. At Bénévent they love a mystery.