ss, to deny what we cannot comprehend, to insult that which we
envy.

On the morrow, Wilfrid, laden with ideas which the extraordinary events
of the previous night naturally awakened in his mind, resolved to
question David, and went to find him on the pretext of asking after
Seraphita's health. Though Monsieur Becker spoke of the old servant as
falling into dotage, Wilfrid relied on his own perspicacity to discover
scraps of truth in the torrent of the old man's rambling talk.

David had the immovable, undecided, physiognomy of an octogenarian.
Under his white hair lay a forehead lined with wrinkles like the stone
courses of a ruined wall; and his face was furrowed like the bed of a
dried-up torrent. His life seemed to have retreated wholly to the eyes,
where light still shone, though its gleams were obscured by a mistiness
which seemed to indicate either an active mental alienation or the
stupid stare of drunkenness. His slow and heavy movements betrayed the
glacial weight of age, and communicated an icy influence to whoever
allowed themselves to look long at him,--for he possessed the magnetic
force of torpor. His limited intelligence was only roused by the sight,
the hearing, or the recollection of his mistress. She was the soul of
this wholly material fragment of an existence. Any one seeing David
alone by himself would have thought him a corpse; let Seraphita enter,
let her voice be heard, or a mention of her be made, and the dead came
forth from his grave and recovered speech and motion. The dry bones
were not more truly awakened by the divine breath in the valley of
Jehoshaphat, and never was that apocalyptic vision better realized than
in this Lazarus issuing from the sepulchre into life at the voice of
a young girl. His language, which was always figurative and often
incomprehensible, prevented the inhabitants of the village from talking
with him; but they respected a mind that deviated so utterly from common
ways,--a thing which the masses instinctively admire.

Wilfrid found him in the antechamber, apparently asleep beside the
stove. Like a dog who recognizes a friend of the family, the old man
raised his eyes, saw the foreigner, and did not stir.

"Where is she?" inquired Wilfrid, sitting down beside him.

David fluttered his fingers in the air as if to express the flight of a
bird.

"Does she still suffer?" asked Wilfrid.

"Beings vowed to Heaven are able so to suffer that suffering does not
lessen