“What nonsense that is, doctor! It is as if you should tell me that I did wrong to have too much bile in my liver. Is it my fault?”
“But can’t you force yourself to dwell on cheerful ideas? There’s that comedy of marionettes, for instance. It was very amusing.”
“Think about a set of puppets? Do you want to turn me into an idiot?”
“For the time being, certainly, if I could quiet down the fire of your thoughts—”
“No compliments about my intellect, I beg you. I am conscious that it is failing, decidedly.”
“Your lordship is the only one who perceives it.”
The baron shrugged his shoulders, yawned, and was silent for a few minutes. His eyes seemed to grow larger, the pupils dilated, and his lower lip drooped a little. Sleep was approaching.
Suddenly he started up, and pointed to the wall.
“There it is again,” he cried, “just as it was yesterday! It was a man at first, and then the face changed—There, she is looking out of the window—she bends over—run, run, doctor! They have deceived me! betrayed me! I have been fooled like a child—A child? No, there was no child!—”
By this time he was wide awake, and sitting down again, he added, with a gloomy smile: