“Ah! very well, very well; I did not know it,” said the count, as he left the room.
While they were conversing together, the baron made several vain efforts to rise. He experienced the supreme anguish of a man who, while still in the possession of his faculties, feels they are leaving him—of a man who has not fainted, but who is about to faint, and who feels on his brow the first drops of cold sweat.
The baroness made her excuses for leaving so early, and, when alone with her husband, asked anxiously:
“What can be the matter with you?”
“And you too, you too,” he replied, pushing her from him, as he raised his blood-shot eyes.
V.
“We must,” said the doctor, “enter into his mania, so as to endeavor to discover the cause. We must make him talk without questioning him. Do you know, madame, in the life of M. le Baron, of any fact that may have left a disagreeable remembrance?”
“Doctor, do you mean a guilty remembrance?”
“No, madame; something terrifying.”
The baroness thought a long while.