"What is the matter with her? What is it, niece?" the old canon
kept on exclaiming.

At last, with the girl's help, I carried Juliette to her room,
gave orders that she was not to be disturbed, and that every one
must be told that the Countess was suffering from a sick
headache. Then we came down to the dining-room, the canon and I.

Some little time had passed since we left the dinner-table; I had
scarcely given a thought to the Count since we left him under the
peristyle; his indifference had surprised me, but my amazement
increased when we came back and found him seated philosophically
at table. He had eaten pretty nearly all the dinner, to the huge
delight of his little daughter; the child was smiling at her
father's flagrant infraction of the Countess' rules. The man's
odd indifference was explained to me by a mild altercation which
at once arose with the canon. The Count was suffering from some
serious complaint. I cannot remember now what it was, but his
medical advisers had put him on a very severe regimen, and the
ferocious hunger familiar to convalescents, sheer animal
appetite, had overpowered all human sensibilities. In that little
space I had seen frank and undisguised human nature under two
very different aspects, in such a sort that there was a certain
grotesque element in the very midst of a most terrible tragedy.

The evening that followed was dreary. I was tired. The canon
racked his brains to discover a reason for his niece's tears. The
lady's husband silently digested his dinner; content, apparently,
with the Countess' rather vague explanation, sent through the
maid, putting forward some feminine ailment as her excuse. We all