"You will laugh at me—but I don't know what is the matter with me ... I am bewitched!"
My first thought was that he fancied himself threatened with one of those misfortunes of which Montaigne and Madame de Sevigne speak:
"All the world of love is full of tragic histories," etc.
"I thought only clever people were subject to this sort of accident," I said to myself.
To him I said: "You drank too much Collioure wine, my dear Monsieur Alphonse; I warned you against it."
"Yes, perhaps. But something much more terrible than that has happened."
His voice was broken. I thought him completely inebriated.
"You know about my ring?" he continued, after a pause.
"Well, has it been stolen?"
"No."