"No better and no worse," she said. "He coughed all last night again
fit to kill himself. Poor gentleman, he coughs and spits till it is

piteous. My husband and I often wonder to each other where he gets the
strength from to cough like that. It goes to your heart. What a cursed

complaint it is! He has no strength at all. I am always afraid I shall
find him dead in his bed some morning. He is every bit as pale as a

waxen Christ. DAME! I watch him while he dresses; his poor body is as
thin as a nail. And he does not feel well now; but no matter. It's all

the same; he wears himself out with running about as if he had health
and to spare. All the same, he is very brave, for he never complains

at all. But really he would be better under the earth than on it, for
he is enduring the agonies of Christ. I don't wish that myself, sir;

it is quite in our interests; but even if he didn't pay us what he
does, I should be just as fond of him; it is not our own interest that

is our motive.
"Ah, mon Dieu!" she continued, "Parisians are the people for these

dogs' diseases. Where did he catch it, now? Poor young man! And he is
so sure that he is going to get well! That fever just gnaws him, you

know; it eats him away; it will be the death of him. He has no notion
whatever of that; he does not know it, sir; he sees nothing----You

mustn't cry about him, M. Jonathan; you must remember that he will be
happy, and will not suffer any more. You ought to make a neuvaine for

him; I have seen wonderful cures come of the nine days' prayer, and I
would gladly pay for a wax taper to save such a gentle creature, so

good he is, a paschal lamb----"
As Raphael's voice had grown too weak to allow him to make himself

heard, he was compelled to listen to this horrible loquacity. His
irritation, however, drove him out of bed at length, and he appeared

upon the threshold.
"Old scoundrel!" he shouted to Jonathan; "do you mean to put me to

death?"
The peasant woman took him for a ghost, and fled.

"I forbid you to have any anxietywhatever about my health," Raphael
went on.

"Yes, my Lord Marquis," said the old servant, wiping away his tears.
"And for the future you had very much better not come here without my

orders."
Jonathan meant to be obedient, but in the look full of pity and

devotion that he gave the Marquis before he went, Raphael read his own
death-warrant. Utterly disheartened, brought all at once to a sense of

his real position, Valentin sat down on the threshold, locked his arms
across his chest, and bowed his head. Jonathan turned to his master in

alarm, with "My Lord----"
"Go away, go away," cried the invalid.

In the hours of the next morning, Raphael climbed the crags, and sat
down in a mossy cleft in the rocks, whence he could see the narrow

path along which the water for the dwelling was carried. At the base
of the hill he saw Jonathan in conversation with the Auvergnate. Some

malicious power interpreted for him all the woman's forebodings, and
filled the breeze and the silence with her ominous words. Thrilled

with horror, he took refuge among the highest summits of the
mountains, and stayed there till the evening; but yet he could not

drive away the gloomy presentiments awakened within him in such an
unfortunate manner by a cruel solicitude on his account.

The Auvergne peasant herself suddenly appeared before him like a
shadow in the dusk; a perverse freak of the poet within him found a

vague resemblance between her black and white stripedpetticoat and
the bony frame of a spectre.

"The damp is falling now, sir," said she. "If you stop out there, you
will go off just like rotten fruit. You must come in. It isn't healthy

to breathe the damp, and you have taken nothing since the morning,
besides."

"TONNERRE DE DIEU! old witch," he cried; "let me live after my own
fashion, I tell you, or I shall be off altogether. It is quite bad

enough to dig my grave every morning; you might let it alone in the
evenings at least----"

"Your grave, sir! I dig your grave!--and where may your grave be? I
want to see you as old as father there, and not in your grave by any

manner of means. The grave! that comes soon enough for us all; in the
grave----"

"That is enough," said Raphael.
"Take my arm, sir."

"No."
The feeling of pity in others is very difficult for a man to bear, and

it is hardest of all when the pity is deserved. Hatred is a tonic--it
quickens life and stimulates revenge; but pity is death to us--it

makes our weakness weaker still. It is as if distress simpered
ingratiatingly at us; contempt lurks in the tenderness, or tenderness

in an affront. In the centenarian Raphael saw triumphant pity, a
wondering pity in the child's eyes, an officious pity in the woman,

and in her husband a pity that had an interested motive; but no matter
how the sentiment declared itself, death was always its import.

A poet makes a poem of everything; it is tragical or joyful, as things
happen to strike his imagination; his lofty soul rejects all half-

tones; he always prefers vivid and decided colors. In Raphael's soul
this compassion produced a terrible poem of mourning and melancholy.

When he had wished to live in close contact with nature, he had of
course forgotten how freely natural emotions are expressed. He would

think himself quite alone under a tree, whilst he struggled with an
obstinate coughing fit, a terrible combat from which he never issued

victorious without utter exhaustion afterwards; and then he would meet
the clear, bright eyes of the little boy, who occupied the post of

sentinel, like a savage in a bent of grass; the eyes scrutinized him
with a childish wonder, in which there was as much amusement as

pleasure, and an indescribablemixture of indifference and interest.
The awful BROTHER, YOU MUST DIE, of the Trappists seemed constantly

legible in the eyes of the peasants with whom Raphael was living; he
scarcely knew which he dreaded most, their unfettered talk or their

silence; their presence became torture.
One morning he saw two men in black prowling about in his

neighborhood, who furtively studied him and took observations. They
made as though they had come there for a stroll, and asked him a few

indifferent questions, to which he returned short answers. He
recognized them both. One was the cure and the other the doctor at the

springs; Jonathan had no doubt sent them, or the people in the house
had called them in, or the scent of an approaching death had drawn

them thither. He beheld his own funeral, heard the chanting of the
priests, and counted the tall wax candles; and all that lovely fertile

nature around him, in whose lap he had thought to find life once more,
he saw no longer, save through a veil of crape. Everything that but

lately had spoken of length of days to him, now prophesied a speedy
end. He set out the next day for Paris, not before he had been

inundated with cordial wishes, which the people of the house uttered
in melancholy and wistful tones for his benefit.

He traveled through the night, and awoke as they passed through one of
the pleasant valleys of the Bourbonnais. View after view swam before

his gaze, and passed rapidly away like the vague pictures of a dream.
Cruel nature spread herself out before his eyes with tantalizing

grace. Sometimes the Allier, a liquid shining ribbon, meandered
through the distant fertilelandscape; then followed the steeples of

hamlets, hiding modestly in the depths of a ravine with its yellow
cliffs; sometimes, after the monotony of vineyards, the watermills of

a little valley would be suddenly seen; and everywhere there were
pleasant chateaux, hillside villages, roads with their fringes of

queenly poplars; and the Loire itself, at last, with its wide sheets
of water sparkling like diamonds amid its golden sands. Attractions

everywhere, without end! This nature, all astir with a life and
gladness like that of childhood, scarcely able to contain the impulses

and sap of June, possessed a fatal attraction for the darkened gaze of
the invalid. He drew the blinds of his carriage windows, and betook

himself again to slumber.
Towards evening, after they had passed Cesne, he was awakened by

lively music, and found himself confronted with a village fair. The
horses were changed near the marketplace. Whilst the postilions were

engaged in making the transfer, he saw the people dancing merrily,
pretty and attractive girls with flowers about them, excited youths,

and finally the jolly wine-flushed countenances of old peasants.
Children prattled, old women laughed and chatted; everything spoke in

one voice, and there was a holidaygaiety about everything, down to