whose face
grew paler and paler:

"How do you feel?"

"Very well," the sick girl would reply, with a faint, heartbroken smile,
which illumined her sorrowful face and showed all the ravages that had
been wrought upon it, as a sunbeam, stealing into a poor man's lodging,
instead of brightening it, brings out more clearly its cheerlessness and
nudity.

The illustrious Delobelle was never there. He had not changed in any
respect the habits of a strolling player out of an engagement. And
yet he knew that his daughter was dying: the doctor had told him so.
Moreover, it had been a terrible blow to him, for, at heart, he loved
his child dearly; but in that singular nature the most sincere and the
most genuine feelings adopted a false and unnatural mode of expression,
by the same law which ordains that, when a shelf is placed awry, nothing
that you place upon it seems to stand straight.

Delobelle's natural tendency was, before everything, to air his grief,
to spread it abroad. He played the role of the unhappy father from one
end of the boulevard to the other. He was always to be found in the
neighborhood of the theatres or at the actors' restaurant, with red eyes
and pale cheeks. He loved to invite the question, "Well, my poor old
fellow, how are things going at home?" Thereupon he would shake his
head with a nervous gesture; his grimace held tears in check, his mouth
imprecations, and he would stab heaven with a silent glance, overflowing
with wrath, as when he played the 'Medecin des Enfants;' all of which
did not prevent him, however, from bestowing the most delicate and
thoughtful attentions upon his daughter.

He also maintained an unalterable confidence in himself, no matter what
happened. And yet his eyes came very near being opened to the truth at
last. A hot little hand laid upon that pompous, illusion-ridden head
came very near expelling the bee that had been buzzing there so long.
This is how it came to pass.

One night Desiree awoke with a start, in a very strange state. It
should be said that the doctor, when he came to see her on the preceding
evening, had been greatly surprised to find her suddenly brighter and
calmer, and entirely free from fever. Without attempting to explain this
unhoped-for resurrection, he had gone away, saying, "Let us wait and
see"; he relied upon the power of youth to throw off disease, upon the
resistless force of the life-giving sap, which often engrafts a new
life upon the ver