Raphael could not repress an angry exclamation, nor yet a wish to silence the fiddles, annihilate the stir and bustle, stop the clamor, and disperse the ill-timed festival; like a dying man, he felt unable to endure the slightest sound, and he entered his carriage much annoyed. When he looked out upon the square from the window, he saw that all the happiness was scared away; the peasant women were in flight, and the benches were deserted. Only a blind musician, on the scaffolding of the orchestra, went on playing a shrill tune on his clarionet. That piping of his, without dancers to it, and the solitary old man himself, in the shadow of the lime-tree, with his curmudgeon's face, scanty hair, and ragged clothing, was like a fantastic picture of Raphael's wish. The heavy rain was pouring in torrents; it was one of those thunderstorms that June brings about so rapidly, to cease as suddenly. The thing was so natural, that, when Raphael had looked out and seen some pale clouds driven over by a gust of wind, he did not think of looking at the piece of skin. He lay back again in the corner of his carriage, which was very soon rolling upon its way.
The next day found him back in his home again, in his own room, beside his own fireside. He had had a large fire lighted; he felt cold.
Jonathan brought him some letters; they were all from Pauline. He opened the first one without any eagerness, and unfolded it as if it had been the gray-paper form of application for taxes made by the revenue collector. He read the first sentence:
"Gone! This really is a flight, my Raphael. How is it? No one can tell me where you are. And who should know if not I?"He did not wish to learn any more. He calmly took up the letters and threw them in the fire, watching with dull and lifeless eyes the perfumed paper as it was twisted, shriveled, bent, and devoured by the capricious flames. Fragments that fell among the ashes allowed him to see the beginning of a sentence, or a half-burnt thought or word; he took a pleasure in deciphering them--a sort of mechanical amusement.
"Sitting at your door--expected--Caprice--I obey--Rivals--I, never!--thy Pauline--love--no more of Pauline?--If you had wished to leave me for ever, you would not have deserted me--Love eternal--To die----"The words caused him a sort of remorse; he seized the tongs, and rescued a last fragment of the letter from the flames.
"I have murmured," so Pauline wrote, "but I have never complained, my Raphael! If you have left me so far behind you, it was doubtless because you wished to hide some heavy grief from me. Perhaps you will kill me one of these days, but you are too good to torture me. So do not go away from me like this. There! I can bear the worst of torment, if only I am at your side. Any grief that you could cause me would not be grief. There is far more love in my heart for you than I have ever yet shown you. I can endure anything, except this weeping far away from you, this ignorance of your----"Raphael laid the scorched scrap on the mantelpiece, then all at once he flung it into the fire. The bit of paper was too clearly a symbol of his own love and luckless existence.
"Go and find M. Bianchon," he told Jonathan.
Horace came and found Raphael in bed.
"Can you prescribe a draught for me--some mild opiate which will always keep me in a somnolent condition, a draught that will not be injurious although taken constantly.""Nothing is easier," the young doctor replied; "but you will have to keep on your feet for a few hours daily, at any rate, so as to take your food.""A few hours!" Raphael broke in; "no, no! I only wish to be out of bed for an hour at most.""What is your object?" inquired Bianchon.
"To sleep; for so one keeps alive, at any rate," the patient answered.
"Let no one come in, not even Mlle. Pauline de Wistchnau!" he added to Jonathan, as the doctor was writing out his preion.
"Well, M. Horace, is there any hope?" the old servant asked, going as far as the flight of steps before the door, with the young doctor.
"He may live for some time yet, or he may die to-night. The chances of life and death are evenly balanced in his case. I can't understand it at all," said the doctor, with a doubtful gesture. "His mind ought to be diverted.""Diverted! Ah, sir, you don't know him! He killed a man the other day without a word!--Nothing can divert him!"For some days Raphael lay plunged in the torpor of this artificial sleep. Thanks to the material power that opium exerts over the immaterial part of us, this man with the powerful and active imagination reduced himself to the level of those sluggish forms of animal life that lurk in the depths of forests, and take the form of vegetable refuse, never stirring from their place to catch their easy prey. He had darkened the very sun in heaven; the daylight never entered his room. About eight o'clock in the evening he would leave his bed, with no very clear consciousness of his own existence; he would satisfy the claims of hunger and return to bed immediately. One dull blighted hour after another only brought confused pictures and appearances before him, and lights and shadows against a background of darkness. He lay buried in deep silence; movement and intelligence were completely annihilated for him. He woke later than usual one evening, and found that his dinner was not ready. He rang for Jonathan.
"You can go," he said. "I have made you rich; you shall be happy in your old age; but I will not let you muddle away my life any longer.
Miserable wretch! I am hungry--where is my dinner? How is it?--Answer me!"A satisfied smile stole over Jonathan's face. He took a candle that lit up the great dark rooms of the mansion with its flickering light;brought his master, who had again become an automaton, into a great gallery, and flung a door suddenly open. Raphael was all at once dazzled by a flood of light and amazed by an unheard-of scene.