Stretched on his bed, where he had passed the whole day, Auguste courted sleep, which avoided his eyes. He was in pain, he breathed with difficulty, and sounds of mirth disturbed the silence of his abode. The person who lived below him seemed to be singing over her work; her voice pierced the thin ceiling that separated her from the hapless invalid, and the latter, on his bed of suffering, distinguished from time to time a vaudeville air or the refrain of a chansonnette.
“Those people haven’t a fever like me,” he said to himself. “Oh! this is an excellent time to be philosophical, but nature speaks louder than philosophy.”
After a sleepless night, the poor fellow, devoured by thirst, found that he had no more water with which to satisfy it. He summoned all his strength, left his bed, and dragged himself down to the concierge’s room; for he dared not apply to any neighbors, and moreover he was alone, between two lofts, on his sixth floor.
“Oh! are you sick, monsieur?” cried the concierge, at sight of Auguste.
“Yes, I have been suffering greatly since yesterday.”
“You must take care of yourself and not go out.”
“Oh! that would be impossible!”
“Leave your key outside, monsieur; I’ll come up to-night to see if you want anything.”
Auguste thanked the woman, crawled back to his garret with much difficulty, and threw himself on his bed once more.
The concierge, like all of her class, loved to talk, and very soon all the lodgers who stopped at her lodge knew that there was on the sixth floor a young man with a very distinguished bearing who was probably going to have inflammation of the lungs.