He had mistaken for human thought the
amount of reason required for a monkey's trick. Philippe dropped to
the ground unconscious. Monsieur Fanjat found the countess sitting on
the colonel's body. She was biting her sugar, and testifying her
pleasure by pretty gestures and affectations with which, had she her
reason, she might have imitated her parrot or her cat.
"Ah! my friend," said Philippe, when he came to his senses, "I die
every day, every moment! I love too well! I could still bear all, if,
in her madness, she had kept her woman's nature. But to see her always
a savage, devoid even of modesty, to see her--"
"You want opera madness, do you? something picturesque and pleasing,"
said the doctor, bitterly. "Your love and your devotion yield before a
prejudice. Monsieur, I have deprived myself for your sake of the sad
happiness of watching over my niece; I have left to you the pleasure
of playing with her; I have kept for myself the heaviest cares. While
you have slept, I have watched, I have-- Go, monsieur, go! abandon
her! leave this sad refuge. I know how to live with that dear darling
creature; I comprehend her madness, I watch her gestures, I know her
secrets. Some day you will thank me for thus sending you away."
The colonel left the old monastery, never to return but once.
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