'But it is that which I cannot understand,' said the old man in despair. 'If you only knew the Marquis de Sabran as I know him; the most courageous, the most gay, the most resolute of men! A man to laugh at death in its face! A man absolutely without fear!'
The other assented.
'Every one knows what he did in the floods at Idrac,' he answered; 'but he has a sensitive temperament for all that. If you did not tell me it is impossible, I should say that he had had some mental shock, some great grief. The prostration seems to me more of the mind than the body. But you have assured me it is impossible?'
'Impossible! There does not live on earth a man so happy, so fortunate, so blessed in all the world as he.'
'Men have a past that troubles them sometimes,' said the Vienna physician. 'Nay, I mean nothing, but I believe that M. de Sabran was a man of pleasure. The cup of pleasure sometimes has dregs that one must drink long afterwards. I do not mean anything; I merely suggest. The prostration has to my view its most probable origin in mental trouble; but it would do him more harm than good to excite him by any effort to certify this. To the Countess von Szalras I have merely said, that his state is the result of the large loss of blood, and, indeed, after all it may be so.'
On the fifth day, Sabran, still lying in that almost comatose silence which had been scarcely broken since his accident, said in a scarce audible voice to his wife:
'Is your cousin here?'
She stooped towards him and answered:
'Yes; he is here, love. All the others went immediately, but Egon remained. I suppose he thought it looked kinder to do so. I have scarcely seen him, of course.'
The pallor of his face grew greyer; he turned his head away restlessly.