CHAPTER IX
ALAS! POOR HELIA!
Phil had been struck down by a rush of blood to the brain. For a long time he had been living as in a dream. His fits of absent-mindedness had already amazed Suzanne. Too artificial a life, constant exasperation, his fierce persistence at work which was beyond his present strength, and the ravages of a fixed idea had prepared him for brain-fever. The ruin of his guitar picture was the last blow.
Suzanne quickly drove Socrate out of the room, and took the mattress which was lying on the floor and put it back in its place. She hastily made the bed, and then, with the help of Poufaille, placed Phil on it. He was still without motion, pale and bloodless, like a dead man.
Suzanne ran to the Charité Hôpital. She was acquainted with some of the young hospital doctors, and she explained the case as well as she could. One of them followed her to Phil’s studio and made a long examination of him. As soon as he entered the disordered room with its tale of want, the young doctor understood all; he had already cared for victims like this of the ideal.
Phil came back to life and moaned feebly.
“He is not dead!” Suzanne said.
“People don’t die like that!” the doctor replied, continuing his examination. “Tell me how it happened.”
Suzanne told the doctor everything.
“It is as I thought,” he said. “We’ll pull him out of it. But, first of all, take away all those canvases—put the room in order; and those portraits of a young girl, always the same one, there along the wall—take them all away! You must deliver him from that vision when he comes back to himself!”
“But he can’t live without her,” Suzanne said.