“Yes, to live!” she said, making me rise and support her; “to live with realities and not with delusions. All has been delusions in my life; I have counted them up, these lies, these impostures! How can I die, I who have never lived? I who have never roamed a moor to meet him!” She stopped, seemed to listen, and to smell some odor through the walls. “Felix, the vintagers are dining, and I, I,” she said, in the voice of a child, “I, the mistress, am hungry. It is so in love,—they are happy, they, they!—”
“Kyrie eleison!” said the poor abbe, who with clasped hands and eyes raised to heaven was reciting his litanies.
She flung an arm around my neck, kissed me violently, and pressed me to her, saying, “You shall not escape me now!” She gave the little nod with which in former days she used, when leaving me for an instant, to say she would return. “We will dine together,” she said; “I will go and tell Manette.” She turned to go, but fainted; and I laid her, dressed as she was, upon the bed.
“You carried me thus before,” she murmured, opening her eyes.
She was very light, but burning; as I took her in my arms I felt the heat of her body. Monsieur Deslandes entered and seemed surprised at the decoration of the room; but seeing me, all was explained to him.
“We must suffer much to die,” she said in a changed voice.
The doctor sat down and felt her pulse, then he rose quickly and said a few words in a low voice to the priest, who left the room beckoning me to follow him.
“What are you going to do?” I said to the doctor.
“Save her from intolerable agony,” he replied. “Who could have believed in so much strength? We cannot understand how she can have lived in this state so long. This is the forty-second day since she has either eaten or drunk.”
Monsieur Deslandes called for Manette. The Abbe Birotteau took me to the gardens.