Sometimes, however, he had an attack of weakness, as the result of one of those very peculiar fainting-fits which I am describing. It was always whilst he was reflecting profoundly, with his eyes fixed on some object or other, and brain working at high pressure that the attack came, and he collapsed. At such times he became paler and paler, until the color came back into his cheeks by itself, and by degrees.
Those attacks left him limp and without strength. They robbed him of his fine feeling of confidence, and I heard him complain after one of them, and murmur in a tone of discouragement:
“I’ll never succeed, never!”
Often had I been on the point of asking him about it. That day I made up my mind to do so.
We were drinking our coffee, Lerne seated in an armchair in front of the window, holding his cup in his hand. Our talk was a broken sort of conversation, with longer and longer intervals.
For want of something to talk about, the conversation languished. Gradually it ceased altogether, as a fire goes out for want of fuel.
The clock struck, and one saw the woodcutters going to their work, with their axes over their shoulder. They brought before my mind a picture of ragged lictors going to carry out an execution of trees.
Which amongst my old comrades would perish to-day—this beech, or that chestnut? I saw them from my window, clothed in all the yellows of autumn, from the deepest copper to the palest gold, each showing its dark touch of shade, or its reddish light amongst those various yellows.
The firs were beginning to get black. Leaves were falling here and there as seemed good to themselves, for there was no breeze.