o
tame her and make her come to you. Let us sit on this bench. If you pay
no attention to her, she will come of her own accord to examine you."

"SHE! not to know me! to flee me!" repeated the colonel, seating himself
on a bench with his back to a tree that shaded it, and letting his head
fall upon his breast.

The doctor said nothing. Presently, the countess came gently down the
fir-tree, letting herself swing easily on the branches, as the wind
swayed them. At each branch she stopped to examine the stranger; but
seeing him motionless, she at last sprang to the ground and came slowly
towards him across the grass. When she reached a tree about ten feet
distant, against which she leaned, Monsieur Fanjat said to the colonel
in a low voice,--

"Take out, adroitly, from my right hand pocket some lumps of sugar
you will feel there. Show them to her, and she will come to us. I will
renounce in your favor my sole means of giving her pleasure. With sugar,
which she passionately loves, you will accustom her to approach you, and
to know you again."

"When she was a woman," said Philippe, sadly, "she had no taste for
sweet things."

When the colonel showed her the lump of sugar, holding it between the
thumb and forefinger of his right hand, she again uttered her little
wild cry, and sprang toward him; then she stopped, struggling against
the instinctive fear he caused her; she looked at the sugar and turned
away her head alternately, precisely like a dog whose master forbids him
to touch his food until he has said a letter of the alphabet which he
slowly repeats. At last the animal desire triumphed over fear. Stephanie
darted to Philippe, cautiously putting out her little brown hand to
seize the prize, touched the fingers of her poor lover as she snatched
the sugar, and fled away among the trees. This dreadful scene overcame
the colonel; he burst into tears and rushed into the house.

"Has love less courage than friendship?" Monsieur Fanjat said to him.
"I have some hope, Monsieur le baron. My poor niece was in a far worse
state than that in which you now find her."

"How was that possible?" cried Philippe.

"She went naked," replied the doctor.

The colonel made a gesture of horror and turned pale. The doctor saw in
that sudden pallor alarming symptoms; he felt the colonel's pulse, found
him in a violent fever, and half persuaded, half compelled him to go to
bed. Then he gave him a dose of opium to ensure a calm sleep.