generosity of sacrifice, vowed while her heart was full, died away. She would do her duty, certainly, for she was an honest woman; but it appalled her—she revolted at it. What had she ever done to be singled out for misery in this way?
Karl still intended to continue his work, but every day, whether it was that the painful memories awakened by the interrupted story impressed him still too strongly, or whether the torpidity of his faculties had not yet passed away, he always put it off till to-morrow. At length he told his wife that he expected a secretary, who had been recommended by one of his best friends. All that night he could not sleep; nervous excitement made him feverish. He recapitulated the incidents in the chapter to be written, just as a general passes in review those troops in which he has not too much confidence on the eve of a battle.
The secretary, a young professor, who was at Paris for the purpose of attending the public debating classes, arrived at the hour mentioned. He was an intelligent young fellow, but awkward to a degree, without tact, and voluble in expressions of condolence and admiration, mingled in an exasperating manner. Karl du Boys, who was courtesy and politeness personified, tried to keep down his temper; but every movement of this well-meaning auxiliary grated upon the quivering nerves of the excited author, who suffered torture with every ill-chosen word. Everything about him was offensive; his manner of settling himself to write; the scratching of the pen between his fingers; the discreet little cough by which he signified that a sentence was finished; all irritated the unfortunate man, and paralysed his powers. Nevertheless he persisted, in spite of all this. He could not see the slight lifting of the eyebrows which greeted his embarrassed paragraphs, his absurd tirades; but he could divine, by the momentary hesitations which occurred occasionally, that his secretary judged him, and that he condemned him pitilessly. In his eyes he was an author doomed.
The unhappy man recalled his working hours in the beautiful studio, where he could walk up and down with long strides; where silence was maintained with religious care; the servants banished from that part of the house which was sacred to its master; all prying eyes kept at a distance by his wife's watchfulness—she herself keeping out of the way, for fear of disturbing him. And now, to show up his inmost thoughts in all their nakedness before this stranger; to display the skeleton of his work, to clothe it painfully under the gaze of those unsympathetic eyes, which he could feel were fixed in astonishment on his own sightless orbs. No, he could never do it!
Yet still he wished to go on. The tick-tack of the clock told the passing time: the sweat stood in beads on his forehead; his nervous fingers clutched the arms of his chair convulsively; slowly and more painfully came the words. This man who had always been so ready a writer—too ready, perhaps—went back on himself, again and again, changing, considering; at length his strength gave way, and he stopped short.
The secretary waited, not daring to break the silence; suffering himself at the sight of that suffering which was becoming agony.
Jeanne, who had entered the room a few minutes before, noiselessly, with her soft slippered feet, came to the rescue of her husband. She began to talk in quite a natural tone of voice, just as though she had seen nothing or divined nothing of what was going on.
"Enough work for one day, gentlemen; I am not going to miss my daily walk, all because you are so enthusiastic."
With a motion of her hand she hastened the young professor's departure. She saw him out herself, and stopped a moment to speak with him at the door. The poor fellow thought it his fault, perhaps, that things had gone wrong so deplorably at this first trial, and begged her to tell him what he ought to do, reiterating his excuses. Jeanne, growing impatient, was obliged, almost literally, to put him out, in her anxiety to get back to her invalid.
He never heard her come back. He was frightful to look upon. The unfortunate man at last comprehended that all was now over for him. More than his eyesight had been killed in that terrible explosion; his intellectual powers had been taken, too. This pretty talent of his was pure native of Parisian soil; born of movement; striking fire only on contact with modern society; requiring the stimulus of touch with externals. He felt himself incapable of that patient study of humanity which concentrates itself more as the subject becomes more intricate. It seemed to him that his imagination, formerly so teeming with life and creative power, so full of originality, had become as if frozen
