Livette had forgiven Renaud, Renaud had not forgiven himself.
Sometimes he gazed at her, deeply moved, and he suffered with her for hours at a time. Sometimes he had sudden fits of rage against her—paroxysms of wickedness, as it were. Was she not an obstacle in his path? At such times, he believed that he was possessed by a devil, and he would kneel by Livette’s bed and pray to the saints, the women of compassion.
Ah! how thin she was! Her eyes seemed to have grown larger, and to have changed from blue to black, because the pupils were still dilated. Her long, fair hair no longer shone. It seemed as if the muddy water of the swamp had taken away its gloss forever.
She often started at noises that she imagined she heard.
She, who in the old days used to talk but little, was constantly telling of the things she had dreamed, and she would be vexed if they were not remembered.
The doctors of Arles tried everything. Nothing was of any avail.
“I want no more of their medicine,” she said one day to Renaud. “They might do very well for swamp fever, but there is something else the matter with me. It was my heart that you drowned. I never could believe you again; it is much better that I should die.”
She had explained nothing to her father or grandmother.
“They would have turned you out of the house,” she said, “and I wanted to see you to the end.”
Her journey to the Icard farm, her nocturnal flight, her accident, all were attributed to an attack of fever, which was supposed to have been responsible for her actions, whereas, on the contrary, her illness was the result of them all.