Clairville, quieter now, was thinking.
"Did some one sing to me about cats as I lay there on my bed?"
Madame reddened.
"Yes, m'sieu—it was I who made a song about the 'Cats of Clairville'.
To amuse myself only, m'sieu, I often do like that."
He looked at her, then down at his speckled, bony hands.
"We are both mad, I think," he said in the most matter-of-fact way, "but you, of course, more so than I am. Well, to-day I have walked in here. To-morrow I shall walk all over this house, and next week, madame, next week I shall walk to the village—well, half-way. Some day I may even go to church. Oh—you shall see, you shall see!"
And with that, natural fatigue, engendered by the wholly unusual exercise intervened; his nurse moved a sofa into the hall, and there he slept for many hours, while she routed out his room as well as she could; his physical recovery from that day was miraculously rapid, and in a fortnight he was as quick and light upon his feet and as much given to the open air and walking as he had been previously doggedly convinced that he could not use his legs and that the least breath or whiff of fresh air would destroy him. So much for the after-effects of the "Pic" and the sweet uses of adversity.
The fine November days that followed were the days that Canada can give in wonderful perfection—when the thick canopy of leaves has been caught up, shrivelled, and disappeared, when a great expanse of sky, forest and river lies before the enraptured vision, with every twig and branch, every stump and hollow in the ground, every undulation and hillock of withered grass, showing as clearly cut and sharply defined as in winter, while the air is frequently warmer than in June and a singular mellow haze fills all the forest paths. Now can be closely seen the different forms of the trees, each trunk and each limb no less interesting than the brilliant foliage which lately enveloped them; the abandoned nests are bare, some on the ground transfixed between the bushes, or pendant from the branches of tall trees. The evergreens of various kinds supply the note of colour which alone gives hope and promises relief from neutral brown and grey, and underneath what once was a leafy forest arcade are all the roots of spring—the spotted erythronium, the hepatica, the delicate uvularia, the starry trientalis. Through such spacious aisles and along such paths of promise Henry Clairville walked every day while the fine weather lasted, wearing the ancient suit and the black skull-cap, and often attended as far as Lac Calvaire by the white peacock and two cats, and always watched from window or door by the faithful Mme. Poussette. Fear of contagion kept the Archambaults away, all save Antoine, who, constituting himself a bodyguard for Pauline in the village, took messages to and fro the Manor House.
When M. Clairville had seen the stores and provisions in his cellar, sufficient, with a few additions, for the entire winter months at least, he demanded of madame if she would remain with him and manage his house, and the poor woman assented with delight. Poussette did not want her; she had no place in the world, no ties; only occasionally was she required to nurse sick people in the village; here was a comfortable remote haven where she might be of use, busied in exercising those faculties remaining to her, which at Poussette's were rotting and rusting away. She remained therefore, to cook and wait upon him; a new existence sprang up for both, and it was when this sort of thing had lasted for a month that the parish priest, Father Rielle, thought it his duty to call.