My good old Julie was waiting for me at the station.Her eyes had failed her of late, for she was seventy years old, nevertheless she recognized me as I stepped out of the train, and began to talk to me in her usual interminable fashion so soon as we were seated in the hired coupe, which my aunt had sent to meet me whenever I came to Compiegne, from the days of my earliest childhood.How well Iknew the heavy old vehicle, with its worn cushions of yellow leather, and the driver, who had been in the service of the livery stable keeper as long as I could remember.He was a little man with a merry, roguish face, and eyes twinkling with fun; but he tried to give a melancholy tone to his salutation that morning.
"It took her yesterday," said Julie, while the vehicle rumbled heavily through the streets, "but you see it had to happen.Our poor demoiselle had been changing for weeks past.She was so trustful, so gentle, so just; she scolded, she ferreted about, she suspected--there, then, her head was all astray.She talked of nothing but thieves and assassins; she thought everybody wanted to do her some harm, the tradespeople, Jean Mariette, myself--yes, Itoo.She went into the cellar every day to count the bottles of wine, and wrote the number down on a paper.The next day she found the same number, and she would maintain the paper was not the same, she disowned her own handwriting.I wanted to tell you this the last time you came here, but I did not venture to say anything; Iwas afraid it would worry you, and then I thought these were only freaks, that she was a little crazy, and it would pass off.Well, then, I came down yesterday to keep her company at her dinner, as she always liked me to do, because, you know, she was fond of me in reality, whether she was ill or well.I could not find her.
Mariette, Jean, and I searched everywhere, and at last Jean bethought him of letting the dog loose; the animal brought us straight to the wood-stock, and there we found her lying at full length upon the ground.No doubt she had gone to the stack to count the logs.We lifted her up, our poor dear demoiselle! Her mouth was crooked, and one side of her could not move.She began to talk.Then we thought she was mad, for she said senseless words which we could not understand; but the doctor assures us that she is perfectly clear in her head, only that she utters one word when she means another.She gets angry if we do not obey her on the instant.Last night when I was sitting up with her she asked for some pins.I brought them and she was angry.Would you believe that it was the time of night she wanted to know? At length, by dint of questioning her, and by her yesses and noes, which she expresses with her sound hand, I have come to make out her meaning.
If you only knew how troubled she was all night about you; I saw it, and when I uttered your name her eyes brightened.She repeats words, you would think she raves: she calls for you.Now look here, M.Andre, it was the ideas she had about your poor father that brought on her illness.All these last weeks she talked of nothing else.She would say: 'If only they do not kill Andre also.
As for me, I am old, but he so young, so good, so gentle.' And she cried--yes, she cried incessantly.'Who is it that you think wants to harm M.Andre?' I asked her.Then she turned away from me with a look of distrust that cut me to the heart, although I knew that her head was astray.The doctor says that she believes herself persecuted, and that it is a mania; he also says that she may recover, but will never have her speech again."I listened to Julie's talk in silence; I made no answer.I was not surprised that my Aunt Louise had begun to be attacked by a mental malady; the trials of her life sufficiently explained this, and Icould also account for several singularities that I had observed in her attitude towards me of late.She had surprised me much by asking me to bring back a book of my father's which I had never thought of taking away."Return it to me," she said, insisting upon it so strongly, that I instituted a search for the book, and at last unearthed it from the bottom of a cupboard where it had been placed, as if on purpose, under a heap of other books.
Julie's prolix narrative only enlightened me as to the sad cause of what I had taken for the oddity of a fidgety and lonely old maid.
On the other hand, I could not take the ideas of my father's death so philosophically as Julie accepted them.What were those ideas?
Many a time, in the course of conversation with her, I had vaguely felt that she was not opening her heart quite freely to me.Her determined opposition to my plans of a personal inquiry might proceed from her piety, which would naturally cause her to disapprove of any thought or project of vengeance, but was there nothing else, nothing besides that piety in question? Her strange solicitude for my personal safety, which even led her to entreat me not to go out unarmed in the evening, or get into an empty compartment in a train, with other counsels of the same kind, was no doubt caused by morbid excitement; still her constant and distressing dread might possibly rest upon a less vague foundation than I imagined.
I also recalled, with a certain apprehension, that so soon as she ceased to be able completely to control her mind these strange fears took stronger possession of her than before."What!" said Ito myself, "am I becoming like her, that I let such things occur to me? Are not these fixed ideas quite natural in a person whose brain is racked by the mania of persecution, and who has lost a beloved brother under circumstances equally mysterious and tragical?""She is awake," said Julie, who had taken the maid's place at the foot of the bed.I approached my aunt and called her by her name.
I then clearly saw her poor face distorted by paralysis.
