And he tried to say it aloud, to make certainty doubly sure. But he had not the strength.
The stranger, however, came up to him and, in a gentle voice, said:
“Don’t tire yourself, captain. You’re all right now. Allow me. Have some water.”
The stranger handed him one of the two glasses; Patrice emptied it at a draught, without any feeling of distrust, and was glad to see Coralie also drinking.
“Yes, I’m all right now,” he said. “Heavens, how good it is to be alive! Coralie is really alive, isn’t she?”
He did not hear the answer and dropped into a welcome sleep.
When he woke up, the crisis was over, though he still felt a buzzing in his head and a difficulty in drawing a deep breath. He stood up, however, and realized that all these sensations were not fanciful, that he was really outside the door of the lodge and that Coralie had drunk the glass of water and was peacefully sleeping.
“How good it is to be alive!” he repeated.
He now felt a need for action, but dared not go into the lodge, notwithstanding the open door. He moved away from it, skirting the cloisters containing the graves, and then, with no exact object, for he did not yet grasp the reason of his own actions, did not understand what had happened to him and was simply walking at random, he came back towards the lodge, on the other front, the one overlooking the garden.
Suddenly he stopped. A few yards from the house, at the foot of a tree standing beside the slanting path, a man lay back in a wicker long-chair, with his face in the shade and his legs in the sun. He was sleeping, with his head fallen forward and an open book upon his knees.