red. His servant might have failed to find the
physician. Again he grew faint, passing instantly from the most
unreasoning hopes to the most baseless fears, exaggerating the chances
of a sudden recovery and his apprehensions of danger. The hours passed
and the moment came when, in utter despair and convinced that the
physician would not arrive, he angrily told himself that he certainly
would have been saved, had he acted sooner. Then his rage against the
servant and the physician whom he accused of permitting him to die,
vanished, and he ended by reproaching himself for having waited so
long before seeking aid, persuading himself that he would now be
wholly cured had he that very last evening used the medicine.
Little by little, these alternations of hope and alarms jostling in
his poor head, abated. The struggles ended by crushing him, and he
relapsed into exhausted sleep interrupted by incoherent dreams, a sort
of syncope pierced by awakenings in which he was barely conscious of
anything. He had reached such a state where he lost all idea of
desires and fears, and he was stupefied, experiencing neither
astonishment or joy, when the physician suddenly arrived.
The doctor had doubtless been apprised by the servant of Des
Esseintes' mode of living and of the various symptoms observed since
the day when the master of the house had been found near the window,
overwhelmed by the violence of perfumes. He put very few questions to
the patient whom he had known for many years. He felt his pulse and
attentively studied the urine where certain white spots revealed one
of the determining causes of nervousness. He wrote a prescription and
left without saying more than that he would soon return.
This visit comforted Des Esseintes who none the less was frightened by
the taciturnity observed; he adjured his servant not to conceal the
truth from him any longer. But the servant declared that the doctor
had exhibited no uneasiness, and despite his suspicions, Des Esseintes
could seize upon no sign that might betray a shadow of a lie on the
tranquil countenance of the old man.
Then his thoughts began to obsess him less; his suffering disappeared
and to the exhaustion he had felt throughout his members was grafted a
certain indescribable languor. He was astonished and satisfied not to
be weighted with drugs and vials, and a faint smile played on his lips
when the servant brought a nourishing injection of peptone and told
him he wa
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