Instead of writing to Virginia to return here, I shall pick her up in passing at Fontainebleau and we will start at once for Nice.’

‘Go,’ said the doctor, ‘this voyage cannot do you any harm.’

‘But do you think that it will do me good?’

‘Doubtless.’

‘And that there is still time to fight this fearful disease?’

‘Yes, we shall pull you through that,’ said Magnan with a mocking gravity. ‘Before six months are gone, I shall be myself in Nice; so you are sure of being looked after by a doctor in whom you have confidence, if, contrary to all appearances, your condition gets worse.’

The two separated, the doctor laughing at the fears of his client, while the latter believed he felt death in his breast, and asked himself if, peril for peril, it might not have been better to face Captain Pelletier’s terrible sword, than to go maybe to die, in the prime of life, on a foreign soil. In two days Bouchereau, pursued by this funereal vision, had taken out his passport, set all his affairs in order, and finished his preparations for departure. He got immediately into a post chaise, and fell like a bomb on Fontainebleau, where he was not expected. Using his marital authority more than he had ever dared to do until that day, he carried off his wife, stupefied by so novel a proceeding, and very annoyed at having to leave Paris, for the languorous epistles of the captain of the general staff had for some time past rendered her residence in that town more pleasant than usual. At the end of the week, the husband and wife, the one trembling for his life, the other regretting her love affairs, arrived at Nice, where, towards the end of autumn, they were joined by Dr. Magnan who showed a scrupulous exactitude in fulfilling his promise.

In the following April, Horace was being played at the Théâtre Français. Thanks to the youthful talent of Mademoiselle Rachel even more than to the old genius of Corneille, the theatre was full. In the centre of the right-hand balcony, Captain Pelletier, accompanied by several gay dogs of his own kidney, was speaking in a loud voice, laughing in the same tone, criticizing the actors, passing the women in review, and annoying everybody in his neighbourhood, without any one daring to call him to order, so powerful in certain cases is the prestige of an insolent look, a ferocious moustache, and the build of an elephant.

By dint of staring through his opera glasses at every corner of the theatre, from the side boxes to the highest tier, the captain perceived in a box in the second row, a group which instantaneously absorbed his attention. There were first, in the front row, Monsieur and Madame Bouchereau, and, in the rear, Dr. Magnan seated behind the young woman. The attitudes of these three people were characteristic. His face pallid and his physiognomy doctored as usual, his eyes adorned by blue glass spectacles, a new grace which he owed to an imaginary ophthalmia, the peace-loving husband held in his hand the theatre programme which he read between the acts, and he listened conscientiously to the tragedy even when Corneille had for interpreters Monsieur Arsène and Monsieur Fonta. Madame Bouchereau was trifling with a most lovely bouquet, whose perfume she frequently sniffed, and whose purple flowers set off so well the whiteness of her complexion that it was allowable to believe that this manœuvre, executed with an air of carelessness, was not altogether exempt from coquetry. Negligently leaning on the back of her seat, the young woman sometimes turned her head half round, the better to hear the words that the doctor addressed to her, speaking in an undertone and smiling, without the husband taking part in this conversation or appearing to notice its intimate and confidential nature.

‘Who is it then you’ve been looking at for the last quarter of an hour?’ one of the captain’s neighbours asked him. ‘Is it your old flame Madame Bouchereau? I thought you’d given up thinking about her a long time ago.’

‘I didn’t know that she’d come back from Nice,’ answered Pelletier reservedly.