Mme. Auvray and her daughter nursed Francis with the tenderest care. Confined in the sick-room day and night, the mother and daughter spent most of their leisure time discussing the situation. They could not explain the lover's long silence or his sudden reappearance. If he loved Claire, why had he left her in suspense for three dreary months? Why did he feel obliged to give his uncle's malady as an excuse for presenting himself at Dr. Auvray's house? But if he had recovered from his infatuation, why did he not take his uncle to some other physician? There were plenty of them in Paris. Possibly he had believed himself cured of his folly until the sight of Claire undeceived him? But no, he had asked her father for her hand in marriage before he saw her again. But, in his delirium, Francis answered all or nearly all of these questions. Claire, bending tenderly over him, listened breathlessly to his every word, and afterward repeated them to her mother and to the doctor, who was not long in discovering the truth. They soon knew that he had lost his reason and under what circumstances; they even learned how he had been the innocent cause of his uncle's insanity. Fears of an entirely different nature now began to assail Mlle. Auvray. Was the terrible crisis which she had unwittingly brought about likely to cure his mental disorder? The doctor assured his daughter that a fever, under such circumstances, was almost certain to put an end to the insanity, but there is no rule without its exception, especially in medicine. And even if he seemed to be cured, was there not danger of a recurrence of the malady?

"So far as I am concerned, I am not in the least afraid," said Claire, smiling sadly. "I am the cause of all his troubles. Therefore, it is my duty to console him. After all, his madness consists merely in continually asking my hand. There will be no need of doing that after I become his wife, so we really have nothing to fear. The poor fellow lost his reason through his excessive love; so cure him, my dear father, but not entirely. Let him remain insane enough to love me as much as I love him!"

"We will see," replied Dr. Auvray. "Wait until this fever passes off. If he seems ashamed of having been demented, if he appears gloomy, or melancholy after his recovery, I can not vouch for him; if, on the contrary, he remembers his temporary aberration of mind without mortification or regret—if he speaks of it without any reserve, and if he is not averse to seeing the persons who nursed him through his illness, there is not the slightest reason to apprehend a return of the malady."

On the 25th of December, Francis, fortified by a cup of chicken broth and half the yolk of a soft boiled egg, sat up in bed, and without the slightest hesitancy or mortification, and in a perfectly lucid manner, gave the history of the past three months without any emotion save that of quiet joy. Claire and Mme. Auvray wept as they listened to him; the doctor pretended to be taking notes, or rather to be writing under dictation, but something besides ink fell on the paper. When the story ended, the convalescent added, by way of conclusion:

"And now on this, the 25th day of December, I say to my good doctor, and much loved father—Dr. Auvray, whose street and number I shall never again forget—'Sir, you have a daughter, Mlle. Claire Auvray, whom I met at Ems, with her mother. I love her; she has proved that she loves me in return, and if you have no fears that I will become insane again, I have the honor to ask her hand in marriage."

The doctor was so deeply affected that he could only bow his head in token of assent, but Claire put her arms around the sick man's neck and kissed him tenderly on the forehead. I am sure I should desire no better response under like circumstances.

That same day, M. Morlot, who had become much more quiet and tractable, and who had long since been released from the bondage of a strait jacket, rose about eight o'clock in the morning, as usual. On getting out of bed, he picked up his slippers, examined and reexamined them inside and out, then handed them to a nurse for inspection, begging him to see for himself that they contained no thirty thousand francs. Until positively assured of this fact he would not consent to put them on. Then he carefully shook each of his garments out of the window, but not until after he had searched every fold and pocket in them. After his toilet was completed, he called for a pencil, and wrote on the walls of his chamber:

"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's money, nor anything that is his."

Dr. Auvray is confident of his ability to cure him, but it will take time. It is in the summer and autumn that physicians are most successful in their endeavors to cure insanity.

THE GRAND MARRIAGE