pon the Saone, thence I passed on
to the Rhone, whence I descended, merely with the current, to Arles;
at Arles I was again placed on my litter, and continued my journey to
Marseilles. My recovery lasted six months. I never heard you mentioned,
and I did not dare inquire for you. When I returned to Paris, I learned
that you, the widow of M. de Nargonne, had married M. Danglars.

"What was the subject of my thoughts from the time consciousness
returned to me? Always the same--always the child's corpse, coming every
night in my dreams, rising from the earth, and hovering over the grave
with menacing look and gesture. I inquired immediately on my return to
Paris; the house had not been inhabited since we left it, but it had
just been let for nine years. I found the tenant. I pretended that I
disliked the idea that a house belonging to my wife's father and mother
should pass into the hands of strangers. I offered to pay them for
cancelling the lease; they demanded 6,000 francs. I would have given
10,000--I would have given 20,000. I had the money with me; I made the
tenant sign the deed of resilition, and when I had obtained what I so
much wanted, I galloped to Auteuil.

"No one had entered the house since I had left it. It was five o'clock
in the afternoon; I ascended into the red room, and waited for night.
There all the thoughts which had disturbed me during my year of constant
agony came back with double force. The Corsican, who had declared the
vendetta against me, who had followed me from Nimes to Paris, who had
hid himself in the garden, who had struck me, had seen me dig the grave,
had seen me inter the child,--he might become acquainted with your
person,--nay, he might even then have known it. Would he not one day
make you pay for keeping this terrible secret? Would it not be a sweet
revenge for him when he found that I had not died from the blow of his
dagger? It was therefore necessary, before everything else, and at all
risks, that I should cause all traces of the past to disappear--that
I should destroy every material vestige; too much reality would always
remain in my recollection. It was for this I had annulled the lease--it
was for this I had come--it was for this I was waiting. Night arrived;
I allowed it to become quite dark. I was without a light in that room;
when the wind shook all the doors, behind which I continually expected
to see some spy concealed, I trembled. I seemed everywhere to hear your
moa