"Ah! Monsieur Emile, you did well to come! Monsieur le marquis was suffering terribly from ennui because you didn't come."
Thereupon he told him that monsieur le marquis had been taken with the fever as he was about to go to the park two nights before, and had tranquilly made up his mind that he was going to die. He had insisted on going to bed in that very room, although he was not accustomed to sleep there, and he had given him instructions as if he never expected to get up again. He had a very restless night and the next morning he said to him:
"I feel much better; this will not amount to anything; but I feel as tired as if I had made a long journey and I need to rest a little. Perfect silence, Martin; little light, little nursing and no doctor; those are my orders. Don't be alarmed about me."
"And as I couldn't help being frightened," continued the old retainer, "monsieur le marquis said to me:
"'Never fear, my dear fellow, my time hasn't come yet.'"
"Is monsieur le marquis subject to such attacks?" Emile inquired; "are they serious? do they last long?"
But he had forgotten that Martin could hear nobody but his master, and, at a signal from the latter, he had already left the room.
"I allowed the poor old deaf fellow to have his say," said Monsieur de Boisguilbault, "for it would have been of no use to try to interrupt him. But don't take me for a coward from his story. I am not afraid of death, Emile; I used to long for it; now I await it calmly. I have been conscious of its approach for a long time; but it comes slowly, and I shall die as I have lived, without haste. I am subject to intermittent fevers which take away my appetite and my sleep, but which no one ever discovers because they leave me enough strength for the little I have to do. I do not believe in medicine; thus far it has found no means of curing disease without attacking the vital principle. In whatever form it assumes, it is empiricism, and I prefer bending under God's hand to leaping and capering under the hand of a man. This time I was harder hit than usual; I felt weaker mentally, and I will confess without shame, Emile, that I realized that I could no longer live alone. Old men are like children for falling in love with a new pleasure; but when it comes to losing it, they are not easily consoled like children. They become old men again and die. Don't be embarrassed by what I say: it is the fever that makes me so talkative. When I am cured, I shall not say it, I shall not even think it; but I shall always feel it as an instinct beneath my apathy. Do not feel that you are chained henceforth to my sad old age. It is of little importance whether I live a year more or less, or whether a friendly hand closes the eyes of him who has lived alone. But I thank you for coming again. Let us talk no more of me, but of you. What have you been doing during these sad days?"
"I have been sad myself because I have passed them away from you," Emile replied.
"Is it possible! Such is life, such is man. To make oneself suffer by making others suffer! That is a convincing proof of the brotherhood of souls."